New reports are coming in stating that Prince Charles would like to open the palace and royal residences to the public after his mother Queen Elizabeth passes away.
“The prince wants to bring people in to connect with the institution. He recognizes it needs to keep evolving, and in the modern era people want to be able to access their palaces,” a royal source said, according to Page Six. “He embraces that and sees them as public places more than private spaces.”
Charles, 72, has reportedly talked this over with the Queen, and he has discussed it with both Prince William and Kate Middleton. When Charles takes the throne, he plans to split his time between Buckingham Palace in London, one of his current homes in Gloucestershire called Highgrove, and the Birkhall and Balmoral estates in in Scotland. He is not planning to spend much time at Windsor Castle, which is where the Queen is much of the time.
While Charles is at Buckingham Palace, visitors will be able to go inside it and view the gardens. The palace is currently undergoing a 369-million pound renovation, which will be completed in 2027, and there are 775 rooms that Charles could open to the public.
At this time, tourists can only enter the palace’s State Rooms and gardens from July to October, when the Queen is in Scotland. An average of 550,000 visitors visit the palace every year.
This comes after Charles’ younger son Prince Harry called out his parenting style, saying that he wants to be a different kind of father than he was.
“Isn’t life about breaking the cycle?” Harry, 36, said while appearing on Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast on Thursday. “There’s no blame. I don’t think anyone should be pointing the finger and blaming anyone. Certainly, when it comes to parenting, if I’ve experienced some form of pain and suffering because of the pain and suffering that perhaps my father or parents suffered. I’m gonna make sure I break that cycle so that I don’t pass it on.”
He added that “a lot of genetic pain and suffering gets passed on anyway. As parents, we should try and make sure we’re doing the most we can. Like, ‘That happened to me. I’m gonna make sure that doesn’t happen to you.’”
Harry went on to say that while this has been “hard” for him, he credits his own “awareness” of his father’s life with helping him raise his son Archie better than he was raised.
“Suddenly, I started to piece it all together,” he continued. “OK, so this is where he went to school. I know this about his life. I also know that it’s connected to his parents, so that means that he’s treating me the way that he was treated, which means how can we change that for my kids? Here I am. I now moved my whole family to the U.S. That wasn’t the plan. But sometimes you’ve got to make decisions and put your family first and mental health first.”
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