Inside Prince William’s plan to reshape the monarchy

Prince William was playing a charity polo match on the day his brother Harry and his family made their long-awaited private reunion with the king and queen at Highgrove House on 10 July.

King Charles hadn’t seen his American grandchildren in four years, but William kept well away from the drama of the Sussex homecoming.

The Guards Polo Club event is a regular royal annual fixture, and cheering from the sidelines on the 30-degree day was Princess Catherine in a sleeveless gingham sundress, bare legs, sparkling eyes, and a beaming smile.

For the past two years, the princess has stayed away from the event, recovering from cancer, so to see the 44-year-old mother of three looking so radiant by her husband’s side was a good news story lapped up by world media.

It didn’t quite drown out coverage of Prince Harry’s chaotic visit, but no doubt Kensington Palace was pleased with the outcome.

Afterwards, the future king and queen kissed, walked hand in hand, and laughed and chatted. Their public displays of affection have become more frequent; it’s a stark comparison to the stiffness of previous generations of royals, but also noticeably different from this couple’s “on duty” behaviour in years gone by.

Tactile informality has been in evidence at public engagements too: impromptu hugs with members of the public, eager handshaking, heartfelt back pats.

This evolution of royal behaviour is partly a sign of generational change – let’s not forget Queen Elizabeth II was born in 1926 and raised in an era of rigid social etiquette – but commentators are also characterising it as a notable change in how this Prince and Princess of Wales are feeling.

There’s no question that royal work involves a degree of artifice – indeed, Queen Camilla has said that the king benefited greatly from his experiences acting in the Cambridge University Footlights as an undergrad.

But with the intense media and public scrutiny, it’s practically impossible to fake emotions.

Prince William described the year following the cancer diagnoses of his wife and father as “the hardest of his life…brutal”.

“Trying to get through everything else and keep everything on track has been really difficult,” he said.

Those comments unmasked William’s extreme levels of anxiety behind the scenes, America-based royal biographer and journalist Christopher Andersen told the ABC.

His wife had been in hospital for abdominal surgery and was initially told the procedure was a complete success, but then, days later, everything changed when doctors mentioned cancer.

It floored William, Andersen said.

“Considering all that he has gone through – his parents’ turbulent and often volatile marriage, his mother’s soul-crushing car crash death, the sad disintegration of his brotherly bond with Harry – that is really saying something,” he said.

“William could not fathom how something like this could happen. Serious illness can bring family members together or tear them apart, and in this case, it cemented their already strong relationship even more. Kate and William feel they have been given a new lease on life, and in consequence, they are less likely to feel the need to hide their affection for one another.”

Also cemented was the importance of protecting their close-knit family unit and not unduly worrying their three young children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis. Catherine quietly retreated from public life to concentrate on her treatment, which was kept top secret.

But Andersen writes about the “crushing burden” carried by William, whom he explains was “always more emotionally fragile than Kate”.

Over the past decade, the Prince of Wales has honed a confident, chatty, public image, and because of his height, physical fitness and good looks, with that ever-present familiarity of looking so much like his mother, he’s striking when you meet him.

But Andersen explains there’s also a vulnerability to the royal that we’re starting to see glimpses of.

“William has always been incredibly protective of Kate, fearing that she might buckle under the pressures of adapting to the demands of royal life and worrying that she might be hounded by the press the way his mother, Diana, was,” he said.

“But what most people don’t realise is that Kate has been just as concerned about her husband. William has spoken openly about the psychic trauma he suffered in the wake of his mother’s death [and] about the emotional scars from having to walk with his brother Harry behind their mother’s coffin through the streets of London, about the fact that he never received any offer of counselling back then and that as a result he still suffers from PTSD.”

Early in their marriage, from 2015-2017, the prince took on a civilian day job as a helicopter pilot for the East Anglian Air Ambulance service, which utilised many of the skills he had learned from seven-and-a-half years of military service, including four years as a Search and Rescue pilot with the RAF.

He later told the BBC that being “exposed to such high levels of sadness, trauma, death… impacts your own life and your family life”.

The prince described being left with “a very negative feeling where you think death is just around the corner. I could feel it brewing up inside me, and I could feel it was going to be a problem”.

When William talks about his mental health, it is incredibly powerful and builds empathy with this public figure, breaking down that ivory tower loftiness that can separate royals from the people they serve.

The princess has talked extensively about how her cancer journey inspired a new outlook on life. For William, a likely by-product is the sharpening of his vision for the future.

A close colleague described his “laser focus” to use his position to make a difference. Much of that urgency to fix the world has surely rubbed off from King Charles, but William wants to do it his way and, at the same time, modernise how “The Firm” runs.

When a recent report revealed that a host of royals were paying little or no rent for Crown Estate lodgings, Kensington Palace was quick to point out that the Prince and Princess of Wales pay £307,500 a year (NZ$707,619) to rent Forest Lodge, the heritage-listed Georgian mansion on the Windsor Estate they moved into in 2025, signing a 20-year lease.

It has also been noted that, like his father, Prince William has no intention of living in Buckingham Palace when he ascends. It will remain the monarchy HQ and open up more for public events.

As heir to the throne, William was born into singular privilege. How he uses it and the work he chooses to pursue present a manifesto of sorts for the king he will become.

The day Will Bax first met the prince is one he’ll never forget. The property executive had been headhunted for the Duchy of Cornwall’s chief executive top spot, and who should walk into the room at his interview, but the Prince of Wales himself.

“He’s one of these people that you obviously feel as though you’ve known all your life… there’s a familiarity there. [Only] I remember thinking you’re a little different in person, to how I imagined,” said Bax, who wasn’t expecting the lack of formality he encountered, nor to immediately connect with the future king.

“He was very human, warm and engaging. He’s good at putting you at ease, so we flowed quite quickly into a conversation that explored who we both were and why we came to be sitting in that room together, which was largely a conversation of why I was interested in the job,” he said.

When the prince’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, died in September 2022, he inherited the dukedom of Cornwall and the duchy estate from his father, who had run it for 70 years.

The duchy is a land and property empire covering about 531 sq km, dotted across 23 counties, with 13 percent in Cornwall.

The private parcel of land and property dates to medieval feudal times; its role was to fund the life and work of the Duke of Cornwall.

Last year, it provided an income of more than £20 million (NZ$46m) for the royal.

Incredibly, ancient charters dictate that a female heir to the throne cannot take over the duchy. In that circumstance, such as when Queen Elizabeth was heir, the estate would be returned to the sovereign – just one of many outdated aspects of royal circumstance William may choose to address.

After 18 months spent learning the ropes – and a testy TV documentary exposing millions charged in rent to public service organisations such as the army, schools and charities by the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster (the latter funding the monarch) – William was ready to shake things up with some bold ideas, hence the need for a new general in Bax.

At their meeting the prince talked about a new chapter and Bax said what really struck him that day was William’s “sense of ambition to do things that are going to be catalytically useful in terms of responding to some of the biggest social and environmental challenges of our time, and the fact that he wanted to use the Duchy of Cornwall as a microcosm for a way of showing what leadership in action could be”.

This framework of impactful change is how Prince William envisions his royal future. You can see it represented in a suite of big-picture initiatives rolled out over recent years.

His approach isn’t without critics.

The traditional day-to-day royal duties of shaking hands, cutting ribbons, and supporting hundreds of charities have been replaced with altruistic passion projects focusing on the environment, wildlife, homelessness and mental health issues.

This leaves both the Prince and Princess of Wales consistently performing far fewer duties than other, much older, senior working royals. Whether the British public supports William’s vision is yet to be tested, but there’s no doubting his resolve.

“I want to create a world in which my son is proud of what we do, a world and a job that actually does impact people’s lives for the better,” he told Eugene Levy at Windsor Castle in an interview for the US actor’s TV series in October last year.

A month after that interview premiered, the king stripped Prince Andrew of his final titles.

The scandal surrounding Mountbatten-Windsor’s friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had reached fever pitch, further damaging the monarchy’s brand, and the king did what his mother had failed to do.

Charles’s disgraced brother, Queen Elizabeth’s second son, the one-time spare to the heir, would no longer be a prince nor a royal highness. Many commentators believe William had a hand in that decision.

According to Andrew Lownie, whose meticulously researched book ‘Entitled’ revealed the extent of then-Prince Andrew’s arrogance and shocking behaviour, William would have preferred “The Firm” to have moved more decisively.

“If William had been in charge, he would have cut the York family off sooner and more ruthlessly,” he said.

“William can’t stand Andrew personally and can see the huge reputational damage the Yorks have done. He’d like his father to clear up the mess rather than pass on the problem to him, as the queen did to Charles. It’s a subject of great tension between the king and the heir and has constitutional implications,” Lownie added.

Christoper Andersen agrees “the monarchy is in crisis because of Andrew’s involvement in the Epstein scandal”.

“Nobody understands that better than William’s wife Kate, who was the first royal to turn her back on Andrew, and the first to refuse to speak to him even at private family functions. She banned him from her annual ‘Together at Christmas’ concert at Westminster Abbey,” said Andersen, whose new biography ‘Kate!’ paints the future queen consort as the monarchy’s trump card.

While Mountbatten-Windsor continues to profess his innocence, without his mother to protect him, he has been effectively exiled, evicted from the lavish Royal Lodge Crown Estate property he leased for a peppercorn rent and moved to a farmhouse on the private Sandringham estate in Norfolk, more than 160km away, with the King covering his brother’s living expenses from his private funds.

“Both Kate and William did not want Andrew around their family, and they were vocal to the king about wanting him banished from royal life and stripped of his title,” Andersen said.

“The Princess of Wales does not want her husband and ultimately her son George inheriting a badly tarnished crown.”

In February 2026, Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested by Thames Valley Police on suspicion of misconduct in public office; the investigation is still ongoing. And in the meantime, more documents from the Epstein files further question his actions and those of his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, providing an uncontrollable drip-feed of destruction.

It’s no wonder then that Prince William wants to change the narrative.

Back at that pivotal Duchy of Cornwall interview, Bax said he witnessed the prince’s tenacity first-hand.

“That sense of personal conviction and real clarity as to where he saw the challenges, but where he also felt the solutions lay, and the sort of intellect and breadth of world view he was able to bring to that conversation was pretty remarkable and continues to be very exciting to work with,” he said.

Bax was hired in November 2024 and hit the ground running. Rents were reduced for some of the charity and community tenants, and in May this year, he announced that Prince William would be selling off a fifth of the duchy over the next 10 years to invest 500 million British pounds (NZ$1.15b) in projects aimed at ending homelessness and tackling environmental issues.

It’s an admirably plucky plan, with a discernible ring of Robin Hood – literally selling the family silver to give back to those in need and heal the environment. William’s rationale is that the duchy “should first and foremost exist to have a positive impact on the world”.

Duchy partners that don’t tackle issues around climate change, nature decline, sustainable energy or social need would, in all likelihood, be let go.

Bax describes William as “relentless in terms of a personal quest and mission” and has been interested in “the compassion” that drives the royal.

“His ability to pick up on the particular challenges that our communities face in a real and visceral way is, I think, quite special in a global leader,” he said.

“And alongside that, he relates to people who are at the most vulnerable end of society’s spectrum; that’s really very unusual for someone in his position.”

In tandem with the duchy reorganisation, William’s Homewards project is now halfway through its five-year plan, working in six flagship UK locations to create a blueprint on how to end homelessness.

While brickbats were hurled – how can a prince with four primary homes and family seats in castles and a palace credibly understand homelessness? – William’s supporters are quick to point out that this isn’t a bid to win popularity. Rather, the prince’s connection reaches far back into his childhood.

“He had a long-standing commitment to the topic of homelessness way before Homewards as a programme concept even existed,” explained Michael Corbishley, Head of Local delivery.

As a boy, William’s mother, Princess Diana, took him to visit the Passage, a homeless charity in Westminster, which he ultimately took patronage of from her. William has since become a patron of another homeless charity, Centrepoint.

“I think he recognises the challenges – the criticism that a prince may face when trying to drive action on social issues, particularly homelessness,” Corbishley said.

“[But] I would say his very genuine passion, his care, and his really strong desire to drive change in this space really comes across. Anyone who has the opportunity to meet Prince William, engage with him, and hear from him directly, I think, is convinced.”

Corbishley is an unapologetic William cheerleader, but a testament to the practical success of Homewards is surely the partners the royal has persuaded to jump on board. These include furniture companies, banks, local councils, employers, schools, builders and more.

“It’s a big task”, William has admitted, but he is adamant, “homelessness is not an individual failure, it is a systemic failure. And if systems help create the problem, systems can help prevent it”.

At the most recent Homewards media briefing, executive director Hazel Detsiny said she has had “punchy” meetings with William over their progress.

“The question that the prince always asks me is ‘How will we know this has worked at the end of five years and how will we know it’s worked for long-term change?'”

Detsiny said the proof will be in changing the culture around homelessness and creating optimism.

Another of William’s initiatives, founded in 2020, is The Earthshot Prize, which has a utopian remit to find and scale the solutions that will repair the planet by 2030.

Each year, five winners receive £1m (NZ$2.3m) for their project.

“When they win, we all win,” the prince said. Australian stars Cate Blanchett and Robert Irwin, and former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern are among the glittering cast of ambassadors supporting William and the 2026 prize ceremony takes place in Mumbai later this year.

When he becomes king, William will have constitutional matters of state filling his diary, and big initiatives like these will have to take a back seat or be passed on to his descendants.

Discussing his future role, William told Eugene Levy: “I think it’s safe to say that change is on my agenda… I don’t fear it, that’s the bit that excites me.”

The secret to the survival of the monarchy has always been evolution within the boundaries of tradition – some pomp must stay to keep the mystique and that all-important familial golden thread – but when you look back through history, each sovereign has shaped their reign in their own image and to reflect the political and social mood of their times.

As an adult, the William the public has seen for close on two decades has been very much a people’s prince.

His football fan ardour for Aston Villa, which dates from schoolboy days, and a flurry of lads’ chats on a variety of podcasts, the latest with NFL stars Jason and Travis Kelce talking about all things World Cup, which dropped on 3 July, have a “just like us” relatability.

Supporting Villa, a team based in Birmingham in England’s Midlands with a proud working-class heritage, was a deliberate and unusual move. In a 2015 BBC Sport interview, William said: “All my friends at school were either Man United or Chelsea fans … I didn’t want to follow the run-of-the-mill teams. I wanted to have a team that was more mid-table that could give me more emotional rollercoaster moments.”

When Villa miraculously made the 2000 FA Cup final, William had a fantastic day at Wembley, even though the team lost.

“I sat with all the Brummie fans with my red beanie on,” he said. “It was the atmosphere, the camaraderie, and I really felt that there was something I could connect with.”

In May this year, an ecstatic William let rip with fans at Besiktas Park in Turkey when the team won the Europa League following a 30-year wait to break through in Europe.

Most of the time, in public, the prince wears chinos or jeans and a sports jacket or rolls up the sleeves on his shirts. He’s also a big fan of old English country pubs, as was evidenced in that Eugene Levy TV interview when the pair chatted over a pint in The Two Brewers, the royal’s Windsor local, which itself dates from the 18th century.

The Kensington Palace media strategy has been expertly honed to reach a younger audience. Social media specialists recruited to capitalise on the power of new platforms and communicate directly with the public, increasingly taking the lead in controlling the Wales’ brand with slick video content.

This dilutes the power of the royal rota, the accredited group of legacy media royal correspondents and photographers who follow the royals around, running a pooled system of shared reporting and pictures, and in the future may even mark its disbandment.

Choosing to talk to non-traditional media more and more is also part of the plan. William’s TikTok appearance as the self-described “beautiful assistant” to social media science influencer Big Manny performing an experiment on a strawberry in 2025 certainly broke new royal ground.

While the prince’s preference for TV documentaries and podcasts highlighting his work is another dynamic comms strategy.

Added to this are informal, but carefully choreographed, family photos and reels where the Wales kids roll around in nature, which have their own crowd-pleasing feel-good charm.

All this is preparation for the sort of modern king William wants to be.

In part, he is reading the room and trying to cut ties with the bloated monarchy of yesteryear and the scandals of recent years, but you can also sense William’s genuine excitement about stamping his mark on the institution.

Who will be the future king’s working royals and whether he will be more stringent with non-working royals using their titles, is a topic of much debate.

While Andrew Lownie believes Harry’s family and Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie will be stripped of their titles, Christopher Andersen is not so sure.

“He is still peeved at his brother and has no interest in welcoming him back into the royal fold, but he isn’t cruel,” he said.

One thing everyone agrees on is that Catherine will be the jewel in William’s crown, especially useful for international soft diplomacy.

“She’s the world’s number one practitioner of soft power,” Andersen said.

“World leaders swoon in her presence. The presidents of China, France, the US all act like smitten schoolboys when she is strategically seated to their immediate right at state banquets. In one sense, she is Diana 2.0.”

While parallels between the two women are clear, there is one important difference.

“Unlike Diana, who came from one of England’s oldest aristocratic families, Kate is the descendant of coal miners, and her mother was a flight attendant,” Andersen said.

“It is beyond ironic that someone from such a modest background will wind up being the saviour of Britain’s monarchy.”

There is certainly a lot to do, not least in the Commonwealth.

Following the decision by Barbados to remove Queen Elizabeth II as head of state in 2021, Jamaica is currently drafting legislation for a potential referendum.

Here in Australia, a republic may seem a long way off according to polls, but opinions can quickly change.

Lownie feels that despite prominent domestic protests, a republic is unlikely in the UK, but adds the monarchy is “increasingly unpopular and seen as irrelevant”.

For William, Lownie suggests this could provide an opportunity for renewal: “To make the monarchy fit for purpose in the 21st century and win back trust and support.”