The Royal Family is Britain’s head of state, its largest tourist attraction and its longest-running national soap opera, and most British people hold all three views at once without any sense of contradiction.
Who is actually in it
The term is used loosely, but the working core is small. King Charles III has reigned since the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in September 2022. His heir is William, Prince of Wales, followed by William’s three children. Around a dozen relatives carry out official duties; the rest of the extended family do not.
Titles, briefly
The heir to the throne is traditionally made Prince of Wales. Other senior royals hold dukedoms — Edinburgh, York, Sussex — which are granted by the monarch and attach to a place without conferring any authority over it. The Duke of York has no jurisdiction in York.
What they actually do
The monarch reigns but does not rule. The King’s formal powers — appointing a prime minister, opening Parliament, giving assent to laws — are exercised on ministerial advice, and refusing would trigger a constitutional crisis rather than a policy change. Royal assent has not been withheld since 1708.
The real work is ceremonial and charitable: state visits, investitures, thousands of engagements a year, and patronage of several thousand charities. The value of the institution, defenders argue, lies precisely in having a head of state who stands outside politics and cannot be voted for.
The money
The Sovereign Grant funds official duties, calculated as a percentage of profits from the Crown Estate — a vast property portfolio surrendered to the government by George III in 1760 in exchange for a fixed income. Whether this makes the monarchy self-funding or publicly funded depends entirely on which side of the argument you are making, and both sides have a point.
Popularity
Support has softened. Elizabeth II’s seventy-year reign carried enormous personal goodwill that did not transfer automatically to her successor, and younger Britons are markedly more republican than their grandparents. But active support for abolition remains a minority position, and the most common British attitude is neither reverence nor rejection — it is a sort of amused proprietorial interest, the way you might follow a family you have known for a very long time.