Did you know that the Duchess of Cornwall is very close to her sister, Annabel Elliot? That’s Annabel standing in front of Prince Charles in the photo above. I think I knew at some point that Camilla has a sister, but I forgot it long ago because we rarely hear about Camilla’s family beyond the sometimes random articles about Camilla’s son Tom. Annabel is a lot less scandalous than most royal relatives, but the Daily Mail is still trying to make something out of the duchess’s sister and something about Prince Charles. By all accounts, Camilla, Annabel and Charles are very close. Annabel and Charles have known and adored each other for decades. Annabel is an interior designer, you see, and Charles has given Annabel endless commissions for various properties, which means Charles has been funding Annabel consistently for years. I think that’s supposed to be the scandal.
Annabel’s commissons. Annabel’s latest commission is the design of a hotel and pub in the middle of Charles’ model village, Poundbury: “The pub-cum-hotel has risen majestically in the centre of Poundbury, Prince Charles’s model village on the outskirts of Dorchester, and will be named The Duchess Of Cornwall — after Annabel’s elder sister — when it opens in October.”
How much has Annabel made off of Charles? “Inevitably there is renewed gossip about Mrs Elliot receiving more sustenance from her sister’s royal table — annual accounts of the Duchy, which provide Charles with his multi-millionaire lifestyle, reveal it has paid Annabel £1.5 million for goods and design services since Camilla, 69, married the Prince in 2005.”
Annabel just copied the design for the Ritz Hotel in Mayfair. “Friends have noticed that the building, which Charles refers to as Poundbury’s new ‘pub’, bears a striking resemblance to Mayfair’s imposing Ritz Hotel, a place to which the Prince has a great sentimental attachment. It was at the Ritz in January 1999, at a party celebrating Annabel’s 50th birthday, that Camilla famously emerged from the shadows to be photographed with Charles in public for the first time. Some in his circle see the similarity in the neoclassical style of the two buildings as more than just a coincidence — since the new pub will perhaps always remind Charles of that key moment in his bid for public acceptance of Mrs Parker Bowles as his official consort.”
Annabel is always around. “Annabel herself, of course, has been the most constant element of all in Charles and Camilla’s romance (she and businessman husband Simon Elliot even accompanied the couple on their honeymoon to Balmoral). Now she is busily designing the pub’s 20 spacious bedrooms, bestowing on them her traditional, rather chintzy country-house style. It’s the same comfortable decor she has installed in some 25 of the 700-year-old Duchy’s holiday-let cottages in the Scilly Isles, Cornwall and Wales.”
Why does Charles keep hiring Annabel? “Wouldn’t it have been wiser for the Prince of Wales to ensure his Duchy employed someone other than his sister-in-law — perhaps someone Welsh — to do up at least a few of the cottages? Now comes the major Poundbury project. And once again, it is Mrs Elliot who gets the lucrative nod…The organisation has not put the interior design work out for tender. It says the Prince is ‘very happy with Mrs Elliot’s work’, adding that work doesn’t have to be put out for tender because the Duchy is a private estate. Some might think this description of the estate as ‘private’ — with its 135,000 acres across 23 counties, but mainly in Devon and Cornwall, and encompassing such national landmarks as South London’s Oval cricket ground — is stretching it just a bit.”
Camilla isn’t getting her sister these jobs though: “But in fact, we understand it wasn’t the Duchess who suggested Annabel create the kind of stylish interiors in Duchy properties that would please the aesthetic tastes of her famously fastidious husband. It was Charles. ‘He adores artistic people,’ explains an aide. ‘In some ways, Annabel has more in common with him than Camilla does.’”
How did I not realize that Camilla brought her sister and her brother-in-law on her honeymoon with Charles? Wow. Well, I guess maybe all of us should review our feelings about the “clingy” Middletons – it might be a case of like father, like son. Charles adores his sister-in-law and wants to give her all of the lucrative contracts he can. And William wants to be a Middleton. So there you go. Also: I love the shade about Annabel’s “chintzy” style.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Getty.
Gah. You’re just trying to put me off my lunch, Kaiser.
The duchy is NOT A PRIVATE ESTATE. It belongs to the nation. The income from it is the Chuck get from the BRF’s funding deal with the nation. No monarchy, no duchy or duchy income for Chuck. Private estate, my backside.
In that case Sixer, i won’t tell you about Charles’s efforts to grab the Crown Estates under the guise of BRF being a cheaper enterprise when ownership is transfered to him. AS IF the crown estates aren’t run properly such that 15% of their profits are being funnelled to Madge already as a result of which her income rises whilst other public service incomes fall!!!!!😲
…….but on a superficially snarky note, those side by side pics look like a before and after make over shots of Camilla.
..not that Annabel is a hideaous beast, only that she looks like a regular person who has put herself together for herself or because she wishes to appear presentable and Camilla has had the ultra glam for the cameras make over. If not for her public requirements, Camilla would look and present herself exactly like Annabel.
Don’t tell me! My blood pressure won’t take it!
I think Auntie Beeb has done its establishment duty and bunged Annabel a few quid, too. I’m sure I’ve seen her on that DIY SOS show.
@ Sixer – according to this it is a private estate
http://duchyofcornwall.org/frequently-asked-questions.html#question_1
I’m sure you will enjoy reading it! 😆
It’s only private in the sense that is part of the ongoing settlement between the nation and the BRF as to their funding, spidey. It is only held in trust by Chuck. In the event we dispense with a monarchy, both the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, with all their holdings, would revert back to the nation.
Unlike, say, Sandringham and Balmoral, which do actually belong to Her Maj and not to us.
You mean you aren’t going to read it all? 🙂
The Duchy isn’t private because the public is the owner of that Duchy.
Charles is merely allowed to manage it as long as he is crown prince. And it seems he sucks the Duchy dry to pay his in-laws.
It is an interesting phrasing, though, on that websie you quoted. I think you can accuse Prince Charles that he does deliberately confuse the public when it comes to the ownership of the Duchy. Describing that the Duchy was founded in the Middle Ages is okay. But not pointing out that he doesn’t own the duchy or that the Royal Family doesn’t own the Duchy any more… that is deception especially from such a high ranking political person. You would expect him to do better.
The Duchy might have belonged to the Crown back in the middle ages. But nowadays it legally belongs to the nation / the state of Great Britain.
I think it is interesting to follow the money and also the history of what was allowed. Sandringham and Highgrove basically have the same backstory and that is that both were acquired as personal residences of the Prince of Wales/Duke of Cornwall, but Sandringham was/is classified as private property and has gotten passed down to subsequent generations as private property, but Highgrove is part of the Duchy of Cornwall.
I suspect that Charles could have privately purchased Highgrove or some other property, but it was more advantageous to go through the Duchy, or that Charles could not afford Highgrove back in the eighties but the Duchy could, or that there are rules or norms in place that were not in place 150-200 years ago.
This is downright and outright lying. Someone needs to take the BRF to task for this deliberate lying. It’s how they get away with sucking the taxpayers whilst pretending it’s all their own money.
So what if the duchy was formed in the Middle ages? It wasn’t formed as personal property. And it has never been personal property. If it were, it would not have smoothly transitioned from one POW of one dynasty to another POW of a different dynasty. It was created to finance POW’s activities in support of the crown. The crown being the people NOT whoever happened to be the monarch. Just like the Queen can’t claim to personally own the state jewels even though she’s the only one who wears them.
And the wording of ownership is very clear that it is the heir to the throne ie no named person NOT the Mountbatten Windsor family or whichever ruling dynasty that has sat on the throne through the centuries. If you, @Spidey, were named the heir tomorrow, the proceeds of that duchy would automatically go to you and stop funding Charles Mountbatten-Windsor.
It is important to know that there is no named receipient of the proceeds of the duchies, only titles which can be anyone named by Parliament, and likewise the duchies can be transferred back to the people by Parliament.
The BRF need to be taken to task for these lies they tell.
While we are here, they do not own nor have they ever owned the Crown Estates.
Exactly, LAK! The crown is the UK; not its current monarch.
Why u have the need to bring up the Middletons in every post about another royal member? u seem obessed
It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the sister was also one of the mistresses back when he was able to stick it in everything. Isn’t that how his generation rolled? The Happy Valley set had nothing on this over indulged randy Prince and the many married women who took it upon themselves to “soothe” him from the “stresses” of being the most pampered ribbon cutter on earth.
^^^This!
Looking for the like button.
This story is old it was first published in 2011 when charles published his accounts.
The Daily Mail- Richard Kay just recycles stories and gives them a negative spin every August so that he can remind people the Diana died 19 years ago in August.
Annabelle Elliot unlike her sister went out to work and developed her own business as an interior designer. If Charles wants to use her on the various properties that’s his business.
And the amount of money covers a number of years. Must be a slow news month to recycle this story.
Leeching on her royal connections, more like. It means that if you employ the sister of the crown prince’s lover / partner / wife then the crown prince might treat you more favourably.
Pay the sister in law in order to get to the crown prince. That is the problem lurking behind.
I think that it is more the Crown Prince and his organization favoring the sister-in-law because she is family and also for her support during the War, the War of the Wales that is.
It said she has been paid $1.5M since 2005. So this is over a period of 11 years? Depending on the number of projects that she’s worked on, that may be reasonable, given that these are high-end properties. That being said, what seems absolutely unreasonable is hiring her for EVERYTHING. Ridiculous!
Charles has a favorite decorator. Big deal.
Seriously, I’m an interior designer and I’ve done everyone in my family’s houses and several of my friends’ homes as well. I don’t care how wealthy anyone is, renovations/new builds are a huge outlay of money with no guarantees (especially if we’re talking old buildings, because…chiiiiiild, you never know what’s in those walls!) and it makes total sense to work with someone you really trust. Believe it or not, there are people in the profession with no clue what they’re doing that can make the cost of the project balloon and take years (!!!) longer than they were supposed to. Go on with the chintz, Charles, and do you!
The Duchy is a basically a government entity. There was no open and competitive bidding to win those decorating jobs. That’s why it’s unethical for Anabelle to be handed all of the decorating work.
In a similar manner, it was unfair and unethical for Liz to give the planning/catering job to her grandson Peter Philips for her 90th birthday. That party was part of the official celebration as head of state. Had it been a private party for Liz, or for Charles, a privately purchased and owned property Anabelle was decorating, there would be no valid claim for breach of ethics.
Like this isn’t how the whole world works? People hire those they know and are comfortable with. Big deal.
LOL Gawd I would love if Carole was behind this story… “I’ll show YOU clingy!”
😆
The Duchy of Cornwall is not a private estate but it is owned by the state of Great Britain / the people. Charles merely draws an income from the Duchy but it ain’t private nor is it his private estate.
The Royal’s finances are a scandal. Nobody knows how much the Queen owns and how much she earns per year. Nobody knows if she profited from the Iraqui war and the subsequent investments of western oil companies into Iraqui oil ventures because nobody knows if the Queen has any investments in the middle east. So theoretically the Queen might have not opposed the Iraqui war because it was more profitable for her to not do that. In order to understand the full impact of that please consider that the Queen is supposed to be impartial. But how can you assume that a head of state is impartial if you don’t know about the financial interests of said head of state.
My sister has way better decorating taste than me. If I could, I’d hire her too. Not sure what the big deal is here.
Oh boy, I feel a bout of meanness coming on…….I’lll limit it to three words….Resting Bitch Face.
That is all.