UK National Archives censors documents showing late Queen Elizabeth's concealment of relative's will

Society 22 January, 2024 11:30

Staff at the United Kingdom’s National Archives has censored documents that show how the late Queen Elizabeth II concealed details of a relative’s wealth from the public, The Guardian reported.

They recently withdrew the papers, removed parts of them and then placed them back in the public domain.

However, the Guardian has established that the suppressed portions contain a request from the late queen to keep secret the will of one of her relatives.The serial concealment of the wills of the Windsor family has become a contentious issue for the monarchy.

For more than a century, the Windsors have been able to keep secret the contents of wills belonging to 33 members of their family. They obtained a special carve-out from a law that ordinarily requires the wills of UK citizens to be made public.

This exemption has enabled the royal family to prevent the public from finding out what types of assets—such as property and jewels—have been acquired by the Windsors and how these were then distributed to, for example, relatives, friends or staff.

The censored documents contain a direct request from the late queen to keep secret one of these wills more than five decades ago. Buckingham Palace declined to say whether she had requested other wills to be hidden from the public.

The Windsors have for decades steadfastly shielded the scale of their wealth from the public. The family does not disclose how rich they are. Last year, the Guardian estimated that King Charles III had a personal fortune of £1.8bn.

One of the ways they have kept details of their wealth secret was by exploiting an obscure legal procedure to obtain court orders to keep wills of family members secret after they died. This has been used even for remote members of their family. In 1987, the will of a Danish prince was closed; Prince George Valdemar Carl Axel was only distantly connected to the Windsors as a second cousin to the Queen’s late husband, Philip.

Since 1911, the Windsors’ personal lawyers have obtained the orders from high court judges in secret hearings. Lawyers for Prince Philip, the queen mother and Princess Margaret have successfully applied to keep their wills confidential since 2002.