If only the queen’s personal assets are taken into account, she is worth several hundred million dollars, according to the Sunday Times Rich List and people familiar with her finances who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. But if all royal possessions are added to the mix, her wealth runs into the billions. Yet even then, hurdles remain: What is the value of the Crown Jewels, for example? Or the many Leonardo da Vinci drawings she holds in trust in the Royal Collection? The queen’s private property primarily includes two homes and estates, Balmoral in Scotland (50,000 acres) and Sandringham in eastern England (21,000 acres), and, on a smaller scale, such things as her prized stamp collection. She also has a private investment portfolio of undisclosed size.

At the other end of the spectrum is a collection of assets called the Crown Estate. This includes farms, a racetrack and property in London, like the Israeli embassy, and is valued at more than $14.2 billion, according to its annual accounts. Those properties originally belonged to the monarchy, but King George III, who took the throne in 1760, handed over management to the state, with all income from the properties flowing into public coffers. In return, he and all of his successors have received an annual payment from the government; the Crown Estate is now run from offices just off Regent Street, one of central London’s prime shopping boulevards (a street that the Crown Estate also owns).

The queen and Prince Charles also own lands and properties traditionally passed down to the monarch and heir to finance private expenditures: the Duchy of Lancaster belongs to the queen, and the Duchy of Cornwall to the prince.

The Duchy of Lancaster has a value of $693 million, according to its accounts for the fiscal year ended March 2006, up from $449 million in fiscal 2002, and generated a net operating income of $22 million. It includes land in northern England, and the Savoy Estate, a patch of offices and shops between the Strand and the Thames in London. The Duchy of Cornwall, 135,000 acres located mainly in southwest England, was valued in March 2007 at about $1.2 billion, up from $835 million in 2003. Britain’s government also pays an annual allowance to the queen and her husband, Prince Philip, for their public work. In the year ended in March 2007, they received $26 million, according to the queen’s most recent annual review of income and expenditures. The royals also receive public subsidies for palace maintenance, public relations and travel costs, which together amounted to about $42 million in the year ended in March. Other government agencies directly paid them about $8 million over the same period for other costs.

Image Windsor Castle weeks after the fire in 1992. When the cost of repairs caused a public uproar, the queen responded by opening Buckingham Palace to visitors, for a fee. Credit... Johnny Eggitt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

All these figures began getting more public attention as pressure for a more open monarchy increased from the 1960s to the 1980s. Media scrutiny, particularly from aggressive tabloids, opened a window onto what critics described as lives of unearned wealth and privilege. The unraveling of several royal marriages in the 1990s — particularly that of Prince Charles and Princess Diana — further dulled the aura of respect surrounding the Windsors.

“The monarchy was part of the set of institutions of privilege at a time when there was a general appetite for opening up,” said Peter Kellner, president of YouGov, a British polling organization. “They were revealed as people that seemed to deserve being less deferential to. As a result they have had to make a number of concessions.”