Middleton's company

[Viviennemary]

There is an article on this in the Daily Mail website.,Apparently the Middletons party company has gone bust with debts of £2.6 m. And lots of creditors are owed money. Somebody has put posters up round their village.

Now so don't really approve of this but it is a bit galling to think of those multi millionaires not paying their debts to smaller businesses that could lose their livliehoods.

By peers I mean the type of wealthy people he went to school with and would have expected to continue to socialise with.

Where do they live, then? I admit I am not up with with the kind of properties Harry’s school and Army friends lived in.

We do know that Harry had access to other royal properties to entertain his friends - early in their relationship Meghan joined him and all his Eton pals on a weekend away at Sandringham, for example.

Would you even go if invited to such a hovel?

Without going into detail, I was at a sporting event recently with many of the same types of people with whom the Kates and Harry's would have gone to school with. Parents in their 40's, all had large country houses with swimming pools and tennis courts.

Larger than Frogmore Cottage for sure.

I just think it would have been a better strategy for Charles to treat Harry a little better from a financial perspective.

William and Kate would be wise to learn from him when it comes to their children and whom they marry.

The Middleton's company is a difficult one for sure.

When I say Charles I guess I actually mean the late Queen as she was the one gifting property at that time.

Is that family money or City money though, stillavid?

I just think it would have been a better strategy for Charles to treat Harry a little better from a financial perspective.

Even before he left Harold was a multi millionaire in his own right and still scoring £2m or so pocket money from Bank of Dad.

Presumably there was nothing stopping him from negotiating a similarly sweet lease deal to his uncles on some monstrous Crown Estate pile to rattle round in had he wished.

Harry was 33 when he got married and accepted Frogmore. Kids are still quite small even now. Presumably when they were school aged he would have moved like William did.

I heard that Highgrove was earmarked for Harry as William wouldn’t need it.

I have just finished Harry’s book recently, and in the book he says Meghan and he were very happy to be offered Frogmore Cottage (by Granny) and went to look at it together and loved where it was, near lake or ponds, wildlife, graves of his ancestors just nearby. Gorgeous grounds. It sounds idyllic. (They had to completely renovate it because it had been used as separated flats for staff quarters prior)

However, what strikes me about Harry and his family was that he always seemed to be considered a bit of an afterthought. And Frogmore cottage was by far the best living arrangement offered to him yet. Pictures of it are lovely. But the other working RF members had a lot more. I doubt anyone of us would think living in Frogmore Cottage wasn’t good enough. Harry and Meghan certainly thought it was good enough. But there’s a discrepancy imo, between the very large housing enjoyed by all the other working royals and what Harry was offered.

There’s also a difference between a child of a monarch (Anne, Andrew, Edward) and a grandchild. Zara and Mike live in a Gatcombe Estate cottage. Does Eugenie have her own home? Where does Beatrice live? I’m sure the plan was for H to be upgraded once he became the child of the monarch.

Harry was though, at that point, a working royal.

I don’t think Zara and her brother were; nor Beatrice snd Eugenie. I could be wrong. They worked, afaik, but not as royals.

@ColleenDonaghy I do actually know a couple who downsized (not a boohoo slumming it situation by any means, just from a really nice standard of living to something less jaw-dropping) to pay their creditors and employees, when the legal loophole option was open to them.

But I don't blame the Middletons for going into administration before selling off, and continuing to live a generally lavish life, as that's what most people would do.

I suppose though the royal connection gives me pause. The only reason for royal figureheads to exist is symbolic and performative, based on ostentatious ideals like noblesse oblige, generosity to the peasantry, etc. Kate fans lap that up anyway.

I'm more of a republican and don't think historically the Windsors could have got rich/become royals by playing nice or being above board... But those who support the royals (and Kate) subscribe slavishly to those ideals. So it might seem quite jarring from their doggedly loyal perspective (or perhaps they think the royals and those in their orbit are merely utilising their god given right to retain top dog status regardless).

@Serenster a lot is family money but possibly also city money. I find there is often a lot of both.

Sorry, to clarify in wealthy and successful families where there are people with good jobs, often they come from money and went to the 'right' schools etc.

So they earn well but had a massive head start/helping hand eg, they were bought a flat in London 20 years ago which they then parlayed into a nice town house and then ultimately a large house in the country.

So they earn well but had a massive head start/helping hand eg, they were bought a flat in London 20 years ago which they then parlayed into a nice town house and then ultimately a large house in the country.

Yes, that’s perfectly possible. But you have to earn a lot - we are talking magic/silver circle law firm partner, Big 4 partner, banker/trader on very high bonuses etc - to afford those jumps. Averagely good City money won’t have funded that. You can’t afford a £5m house, private schools, lots of socialising , fancy holidays and a high-status lifestyle etc on a salary south of £500,000, for example.

Pkenty of people do earn enough to have that kind of lifestyle of course. I wouldn’t necessarily have thought there’s too much crossover between them and Harry’s close circle of friends, however.

There are quite a few of those people out there that you meet if your DC are at a big boarding school.

I imagine Harry just imagined he would have that as a bare minimum.

By the time his children were that age he likely would have had a similar home

Seen it time and time again, people often base someone's wealth on their spending. The two are not related. I have known quite a few people give the appearance of wealthy, but it is a house of cards, built on debt. The Middletons were no different. They were heavily leveraged to fund their extravagant lifestyle, and eventually it came crashing down. I don't believe Party Pieces was ever worth £30 million.

But they don't appear to have to downsize, lose a little of the luxe lifestyle.

I thought the Duke of Kent had been budged out of his huge Kensington flat into a much smaller cottage in KP so that it could be done over for M & H? Nottingham Cottage was only ever a staging post, for many royal offspring.

Then K&W and M&H fell out so the latter decided on Windsor so as not to bump into them all the time?

I think that was the Gloucesters who were in the apartment next to W&K.

I think Harry and Meghan would certainly have ‘leveled’ up with property as the years went by. Specifically when Charles became King as then Harry was the son of the monarch.

At marriage he was one of eight grandchildren and it doesn’t seem that the Queen gave big properties to Anne’s kids on marriage or Andrew’s.

Anne gave hers houses on her estate. The York sisters first had a shared apartment at St. James and then Eugenie got to rent Ivy Cottage at KP on marriage - which was similar to Nott Cottage.

I don’t think Beatrice was given anything new on a royal estate at marriage.

William as the direct heir was a different case to all the other grandchildren.

Really at the point of marriage it should have been Charles helping Harry with his accommodation if they didn’t think Nott Cott was good enough rather than the Queen.

I agree. And considering their books were private we'd never know.
But it was definitely a lot of PR.

My money is they are now receiving 'a pension' from William. He will want them to have a fancy house for visiting grandchildren.

My money is they are now receiving 'a pension' from William

Of course they are. You can't have the future Queens parents shopping in Lidl or buying clothes from M&S.

I hadn’t actually seen the posters until today - lol - well she certainly got her message across!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12679251/onlyfans-model-hate-campaign-kate-middleton-family-party-pieces-bucklebury.html