$38 BILLION IN TANGIBLE ASSETS

The Windsors’ Carbon Footprint Is the Oligarchy’s Biggest Fortune

by Richard Freeman

[Print version of this article]

Nov. 20—Prince Charles of the British monarchy’s House of Windsor is pushing the Great Reset, not to benefit mankind, but to carry out a genocide, cloaked in the guise of stopping climate change. In terms of hard physical/tangible assets, the Windsors may be one of the three wealthiest families in the world: The publication Brand Finance reported in its November 2017 issue that the monarchy’s total 2016 tangible assets (not stocks or securities) amounted to £25.5 billion, equivalent to approximately $38 billion in 2021.

The House of Windsor’s assets are incredibly varied and immense. It owns 24 very large royal castles and residences; the world’s largest private art collection; valuable, high-yielding residential and commercial rental property situated across several countries; the largest holdings of jewels; a one-mile-long street in London’s West End that is home to posh shops; a massive assemblage of profitable, subsidized wind farms, and large tracts of virgin land.

Prince Charles played a leading role in organizing and addressing the recent, unsuccessful COP26 “climate summit” in Glasgow, where he pushed two new “climate change” initiatives. The first was to demand, and propose to lead, a global mobilization of the biggest private banks to stifle fossil fuel industries and mechanized agriculture.

We have to put ourselves on a war-like footing. With a growing global population creating ever increasing demand on the planet’s finite resources, we have to reduce emissions urgently…. We know this will take trillions, not billions of dollars…. Here what is needed is a vast military-style campaign to marshal the strength of the global private sector [for a] fundamental economic transition.

His Royal Highness Charles’ second new campaign for COP26 was a “Terra Carta” aimed at locking up large areas of the planet against agricultural or other human exploitation. Charles is an expert at locking away large areas of land, as the Windsors are at owning them.

The House of Windsor is a living expression of, and views the world through the lens of, the Babylonian model of oligarchy. In that model, which dates back several millennia, at the top there is a very wealthy ruling class, 1-2% of the population, who are emperors, financiers, and a usurious priestly class; the other 98% of the population are consigned to being servants, slaves, or in the class of peasants. In his essay, “The Mystery of Your Time,” in the January 20, 2012 issue of EIR, Lyndon LaRouche identified the Babylonian model:

[A] society [that] has been largely organized around an oligarchical system whose habit was to cull … the greater portion of the human population’s ordinary folk periodically, to ensure the security of an oligarchical party’s control over the sundry bodies of slaves and quasi-slaves of the system of oligarchical tyrannies.

In his essay, “The Cult of the Oligarchy: the Gore of Babylon,” in the March 30, 2007 EIR, LaRouche also explained how the Babylonian model got to, and took over the United Kingdom, and for periods, the entire world:

So, with the accession of Venice’s asset Georg Ludwig Welf of Hannover, aka George I, in 1714, the Whore of Babylon became incarnate once more, this time, in that British monarchy, against which the North American patriots struggled, to establish the Federal Constitutional Republic of the United States according to the anti-John Locke model of natural law and economy of Gottfried Leibniz.

The British monarchy has built up over centuries colossal wealth and considerable political power. It has built such wealth going back to King Egbert/Ecgberht (775-839), often credited as the first King of England. That wealth was enlarged through the 1066 Norman barbarian invasion of England, and William the Conqueror, the leader of that invasion who crowned himself King. Between 1070 and 1086, King William conceived of and built the first stage of Windsor Castle, above the River Thames, a motte-and-bailey castle, which is a fortification with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised area of ground. William was known for his pillaging, rapine, and cruelty. William also reached an agreement with the one-square-mile walled City of London, the concentration of England’s finance, trading and wealth, and gave it special privileges. Today, this City of London is protected by these privileges, which makes it the center of world finance, speculative transactions, and the financial side of the global drugs trade.

In subsequent centuries the looting process continued. In 1600, the Crown and City of London launched the Honourable East India Company, a semi-independent trading company which looted India, and in the process touched off multiple famines. In 1663, King Charles II and the City of London established the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa, later renamed the Royal Africa Company, which took hundreds of thousands of African human beings and sold them into slavery, especially in the New World. In the 1800s, the British Empire instigated two opium wars against China, inundating that country with opium and its associated addiction. In each case, and other similar circumstances, using its superior military and/or trading position, the British Empire stole valuable art works, rich tapestries, jewels, sculpture, and other articles, of which the monarchy took a share. Thus, the tangible physical wealth and fortune of the Crown grew.

Owning the Very Coasts of the Kingdom

Inside the United Kingdom, the House of Windsor set up various avenues to enrich itself. For example, in Great Britain, the monarchy owns half of Britain’s physical coastline, rather than the British government owning all of it.

In addition to $38 billion of physical holdings, the House of Windsor owns a further $1 to $5 billion in financial holdings, managed by the elite Coutts investment bank, bringing Royal holdings of all types to $40 billion. Others may have larger financial wealth. For example, Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, is reportedly worth $191 billion, but 90% of that is invested in financial paper that can quickly turn into ashes in a financial disintegration.

The Great Reset/Green New Deal is a reflection and an implementation of the Babylonian model of oligarchy. The House of Windsor, the City of London-Wall Street financiers, and their allies around the world, in order to protect their assets—tangible and otherwise—and preserve their oligarchical system, would, under a central bankers’ dictatorship, shut down agro-industrial production, cut energy systems, and reduce the world’s population.

We will look at some of the Crown’s holdings—mere possessions—for which it would sacrifice human life.

Royal Castles and Residences

The House of Windsor owns 24 royal palaces and residences that were constructed over 12 centuries for the ruling family’s insatiate pleasure, located in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Immense in size, ornate in style, often inlaid with gold and marble, containing hand-wrought furniture and tapestry, they dwarf the dwellings of all the royal families, and non-royals, in the world.

Buckingham Palace. Most people are familiar with Buckingham Palace as the place where the Queen’s Guard, wearing their snappy bearskin hats, change guard every two hours. The Duke of Buckingham began construction of the palace in 1703; it is the monarchy’s administrative center, and where Queen Elizabeth lives during week days.

But peering behind the walls is revealing. Designed in a neoclassical style, the palace has no less than 775 rooms, including 52 royal and guest bedrooms, 19 state rooms, 92 offices, 78 bathrooms, and 188 staff bedrooms. Each room is stuffed with goods from around the earth, and meticulously maintained.

How many beds do the Queen and the royals need to sleep in?

Windsor Castle. As mentioned, this was constructed in its first phase by King William the Conqueror between 1070 and 1086. The reconstructions and modernizations have continued since then. Located in the county of Berkshire, England, it is the largest continuously occupied fortress in the world. It is also the single largest home anywhere in the world, covering a floor space of 45,000 square meters (about 484,000 square feet). The Crown reports that it has about 1,000 rooms, each themed. For example, the Green Room has three huge chandeliers hanging over green richly upholstered chairs, and similarly colored carpets, with gold brocade strewn across the room.

Balmoral Castle. The first phase of construction was reportedly started by King Robert II of Scotland in the 14th Century, and the foundation stone for the modern structure was laid by Queen Victoria in 1853. It is located in Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. This large structure has 58 bedrooms. Most importantly, it sits upon 50,000 acres of land.

Look at the grounds of the castle. There is in the vicinity no factory smoke, because there are no factories near. There are no workers or other underclass intruders walking about, except for the servants who serve the Royals. The lawn is well-manicured, every blade of grass in place. This is the outlook of pure environmentalism, where man doesn’t intrude upon nature—it is the outlook of oligarchism. Environmentalism and oligarchism are the same.

The Royals also own additional castles, such as Sandringham located in Sandringham, Norfolk, England (20,000 acres); Holyroodhouse located in Edinburgh, Scotland; Hillsborough House, in north-west County Down in Northern Ireland; Llwynywormwood Estate, in Carmarthenshire, Wales; Birkhall, a castled-estate, also in Aberdeenshire, Scotland; and Kensington Palace, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London, England; and so forth.

Prince Charles himself owns or occupies five royal castles or residences.

The Crown Estate

The vast majority of the British Monarchy’s collection of properties, including castles, business enterprises, land, etc., are held in an entity called the Crown Estate, which is administered for business by the Crown Estate Commissioners but on behalf of the monarch. It is owned by the monarch “in right of The Crown.” That is, whichever family is sitting on the throne, owns the properties and passes them on to its successors. Among the castles, there are two exceptions: Balmoral and Sandringham are owned outright and directly by the Windsor family.

The income of the monarchy is quite sizeable. For the 2019/2020 fiscal year, the Crown Estate announced its net revenue profit was £٣٤٥.٠ million (US$482 million). Through a series of evolutions, the latest being the Sovereign Grant Act of 2011, the House of Windsor gets one quarter—or £٨٦.٢٥ million (US$120 million)—of this Crown Estate revenue, for upkeep and its direct use. The other three-quarters of the revenue goes to the British Treasury.

Thus, the Royal family has the prerogative to own its assets—exempted from many taxes paid by ordinary Britons—and earn sizeable income, also free of tax until at least 1989, just for existing.

Windfarms, Seabed, Regent Street, Properties Around the World

The British Royal family is one of the largest leasers in the world of sea-based windfarms by virtue of its being the largest landowner in Britain. As mentioned earlier, the British Monarchy owns approximately 55% of the United Kingdom’s coast line foreshore, held in the above-described Crown Estate, and owns virtually all of the UK’s seabed from mean low water to the 22 km (12 nautical-mile) limit, a vast stretch, also held in the Crown Estate.

This arrangement was supported by the fact that in 2002 under the Tony Blair government, there was a move to use a UN convention to create an “exclusive economic zone” for wind and wave power within the continental shelf boundary. This was codified into law in 2004, through the British Energy Act.

The Monarchy cashes in on such green policies. The Crown Estate has been negotiating, under the Great Reset, a wave of new seabed leases to windfarm operators—alongside the existing windfarm leases—which some estimate would double the annual profit of the Crown Estate, and thus double the annual revenue flowing from this to the House of Windsor from £٨٦.٢٥ million annually to £172.5 million annually.

Other real estate. Located in the heart of London’s West End, Regent Street is one of the world’s most famous roads. Measuring approximately 1 mile in length, the street runs through both Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus, has posh shops, and attracts more than 7.5 million visitors per year. It’s all part of the Crown Estate, meaning it legally belongs to Her Majesty.

One can hardly go to other parts of London, or other parts of the United Kingdom, without bumping into something owned by the Monarchy. Let us examine just four examples:

• Trafalgar Square, the well-known public square in Westminster, London—home to the British National Gallery art museum and Nelson’s column, and visited by 15 million tourists every year—is owned by the Crown.

• The Tower of London is yet another one of the Queen’s possessions “in right of the Crown.” The property dates to the 11th Century, and has played an important role in British history.

• Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is almost a millennium old. Royalty is buried there, royal coronations are conducted there, the poet Geoffrey Chaucer and the composer George Frederick Handel are buried there, and in the famous section of the Abbey designated the “Poets Corner,” there are memorials erected to William Shakespeare, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Burns, and Christopher Marlowe. The monarch, who is also the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, directly owns the Abbey.

• The May 15, 2018 Independent newspaper reported that “away from the [London] capital, the Crown Estate owns 14 retail and shopping parks and three shopping centres.” The Queen also owns land privately in the United States and Canada, according to Stu Allen, a retired British diplomat, including a horse farm in Kentucky, and “is believed to own prime Park Avenue [real] estate in New York City.” She owns land in Ibero-America.

Perhaps the vastest tracts of land of the Queen are owned through the British Commonwealth. The British Commonwealth was created at the 1926 Imperial Conference, held in London, and codified in the Balfour Declaration of that year. There are 54 Commonwealth states, but significantly there are 16 of these states, called Commonwealth Realms, where the Queen of England serves as both the reigning monarch and head of state. The Queen is also the monarch of 14 overseas territories (including Gibraltar and the Malvinas/Falkland Islands) and three domestic territories.

The Commonwealth Realms, where the British Queen is head of state, include Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and a host of primarily Caribbean nations, most notably, the Bahamas. The British monarch technically owns the 18.65 million square kilometers (7.2 million square miles) of the land mass of all these nations, which is one-eighth of the earth’s total land mass. The British Crown doesn’t exert de jure ownership of these Commonwealth Realms, and this article does not include that land as part of the Monarchy’s total listed tangible assets, but it does give the Monarchy considerable leverage.

We see some of the Queen’s power.

The Monarch appoints a Governor General for each of these states, who represents the Monarch’s interest in that state, and the Governor-General can remove elected leaders of that country (such as when, in 1975, the Queen’s Governor General in Australia, John Kerr, removed elected Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam). The British Crown is intimately involved in the Commonwealth Realms’ cartels for raw materials, food, and energy supply, upon which human existence is dependent.

The Queen, as the reigning monarch, owns three Crown Dependencies, island territories off the coast of Great Britain: the Isle of Man, the Bailiwick of Jersey, and the Bailiwick of Guernsey, which are the extended “offshore” arms of the City of London banking center. They are premier off-shore centers, along with the Commonwealth Realm Bahamas, in tax-sheltering, diverting black money, terrorist-financing, and the international drug trade.

The Monarchy’s Immense Jewelry and Art Holdings

The monarchy’s Royal Collection Trust holds a treasure chest of precious jewels. Spread out in the Monarchy’s jewelry and gem collection, inherited over 12 centuries—which collection author Kimberly Holland, in the July 15, 2021 Reader’s Digest, reported to be worth an estimated £3 billion (US$4 billion)—are 40 glittering tiaras.

Each of them has its own name. For example, the Diamond Diadem tiara, which is set with 1,333 diamonds, including a four-carat yellow diamond in the center, is worn by the Queen to every State Opening of Parliament. The Crown collection owns the Great Star of Africa diamond, weighing in at 530 carats, the world’s largest clear-cut diamond. The Monarchy’s Collection Trust owns thousands of gems, scepters, orbs, vestments, sabers, a massive Fabergé egg collection, and more.

This is the Babylonian’s oligarchical model concept: vast accumulation of wealth, piling it ever higher.

It is saddening and upsetting that the Monarchy’s art collection, the largest private collection in the world, also held in the Royal Collection Trust, is owned privately by the British Royal Family. Containing 7,000 paintings and 30,000 drawings and water colors, composed by some of the world’s greatest artists, it was collected principally by Kings Charles I (1625-1649), Charles II (1660-85), George III (1760-1820), and George IV (1820-30). They sent out purchasing agents with tons of money—garnered through the proceeds of the African slave trade and Indian opium trade—to buy art works, from an advantaged trading position. But the Royal Collection Trust’s deliberate obfuscation on how some parts of the collection were gathered, suggests that thievery and coercion may have factored in heavily, as was the case of Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl Elgin’s stealing of marble sculptures from the Parthenon on the Acropolis at Athens, Greece, as well as other sculptures, from 1801 to 1812.

The Collection owns 550 original drawings and sketches by Italy’s Leonardo da Vinci, including the dramatic, animated sketch of the Battle of Anghiari, for a painting of that name that has been lost; the famous annotated sketch of Studies of the Fetus in the Womb; the sketch of the head of St. Anne, for the realized painting of Madonna and Child with St. Anne; hundreds of anatomical sketches; and scientific sketches, including sketches of vortices, with investigative annotation.

The Royal Collection Trust owns the Raphael Cartoons, one of the great treasures of the Renaissance, which are a set of seven full-scale designs for tapestry painted by Raphael Sanzio. They were commissioned in 1515 by Pope Leo X for the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel and depict the lives of the apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul.

The Royal Collection holds in its claws Rembrandt van Rijn’s Shipbuilder and His Wife; a Rembrandt self-portrait in a cap and 4 other Rembrandt paintings; Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Massacre of the Innocents; Johannes Vermeer’s Lady at the Virginal; a painting by Giorgio Vasari, the author of The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects; and art works by scores of other artists.

For the Royals, these are possessions which they can boast of and hoard, occasionally showing them. They should be permanently on display around the world, elevating those who are enriched by great art.

Subordinating Humanity

This vast Windsor wealth of, at least, $38 billion in tangible/physical assets is never “called out” when the world’s richest people are named either for praise or shame, or to make social demands on their wealth. Yet it represents greater tangible wealth than any of those mega-billionaires possess, hoarded over centuries. Now, with the world financial system facing disintegration, Prince Charles, the financiers of the City of London and Wall Street, and allied oligarchs in such as the World Economic Forum, concentrate on their overriding concern, saving the oligarchical system. They work to build a perhaps $100 trillion green speculative bubble supported by central banks, on the backs of industry, agriculture and developing countries.

The Great Reset/Green New Deal is the Babylonian model of oligarchy—pure fascism. The Windsor family’s wealth displays the paradigm. As they attempt to save the massive wealth and considerable oligarchical power they have accumulated over centuries, the world’s physical economy and much of its population may not survive.