Peppercorn rents, ‘racist’ brooches and Russophile controversies: Prince and Princess Michael of Kent call time on a colourful career

With allegations of racism, questionable Russian links, disparaging comments about fellow royals and rows over a racist brooch and their palace rent, it has certainly been eventful.

The retirement of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent brings down the curtain on a colourful royal career, punctuated by a seemingly never-ending stream of controversies.

The Princess’s perceived pomposity and desire for the finer things in life have hardly boosted their reputation, not to mention their fondness for a payday.

Born in 1942, Prince Michael is a first cousin of the Queen, as they are both among King George V’s nine grandchildren.

As a five-year-old, he was a page boy at her wedding and is often seen at the monarch’s side at family events, alongside his siblings, Princess Alexandra and the Duke of Kent.

The youngest of three children born to Prince George, Duke of Kent and Princess Marina of Greece, the Prince was just seven weeks old when his father was killed in a plane crash.

He attended Sunningdale School in Berkshire, followed by Eton and Sandhurst, before becoming the first member of the Royal family to learn Russian. He became a qualified interpreter.

Since described as a Russophile, his resemblance to the murdered Tsar Nicholas II, a distant cousin, is said to have made him something of a pin-up in the former Soviet Union.

Prince Michael, 79, married German divorcée Baroness Marie-Christine von Reibnitz in Austria in 1978.

Eighth in line to the throne at birth, he lost his right of succession as his wife is a Roman Catholic, although this was reinstated with a change in law in 2013.

The move prompted his wife to state: “The fact is, of those who have married into the family since Prince Philip, I had more royal blood.”

The couple have two children: Lord Frederick Windsor, 43, and Lady Gabriella Windsor, 41.

The Kents have maintained a relatively low profile but, as non-working royals, they have been forced to use their royal status to make a living.

Their blue-blooded pedigree was no guarantee of cashflow, and it was often that ill-fated pursuit of money that thrust them into the public eye – leading them to be dubbed “Rent-a-Kent” and “Princess Pushy”.

Princess Michael, 77, gave a sly nod to their reputation when she once opened a Happy Eater restaurant joking: “I’d go anywhere for a hot meal.”

Although not on the civil list, Prince Michael has typically made around 100 official charitable appearances a year, plus many more for “royal, diplomatic, military or Masonic functions”.

Their one-foot-in, one-foot-out approach to royal life has oft proved problematic.

The Kents were given a grace and favour apartment at Kensington Palace as a wedding present from the Queen, but faced criticism in 2002 when it emerged that they had been paying a peppercorn rent of £69 a week for the five-bedroom, five reception room property, despite not being official working royals.

It came amid wider criticism of the amount paid by minor royals for their homes, subsidised by the taxpayer.

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee called on the Queen to evict palace residents and put the apartments on a more commercial footing.

In response, Buckingham Palace said the monarch would allow them to continue living rent-free and foot the annual £120,000 bill from her own private income for seven years, before the Kents were asked to pay the rent themselves.

In 2009, just months before they were saddled with the financial burden, the couple sold a series of family heirlooms at Christie’s, including informal photographs of Queen Victoria and the last Tsar, a Coronation chair and Prince Michael’s silver christening set.

Prince Michael’s various business dealings with Russia have landed him in hot water more than once, although he has always denied wrongdoing.

In 1998, he became the patron of the Russo–British Chamber of Commerce, which led him to travel widely in Russia, many of his trips allegedly funded by Russian business.

It emerged in 2012 that he had received at least £320,000 from exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky to assist with staff costs.

Last May, he found himself at the centre of a scandal when it was claimed that he was willing to use his royal status for personal profit and provide access to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s regime.

The Prince was filmed telling undercover reporters that he would give their fictitious company his royal endorsement in a recorded speech for a $200,000 (£162,000) fee and was happy to use his Kensington Palace home as a backdrop.

He said his long-standing connection to Russia “could bring some benefit” to their company, the House of Haedong.

The Marquess of Reading, his friend and business partner of 30 years, claimed the Prince had a de facto role as “Her Majesty’s unofficial ambassador to Russia” and was able to meet with Putin.

Simon Astaire, the Prince’s spokesman, insisted at the time: “Prince Michael has no special relationship with President Putin. They last met in 2003 and he has had no contact with him or his office since then.”

In March, as Russia invaded Ukraine, Prince Michael returned the Order of Friendship, one of the highest orders in Russia, that he had received in 2009 for his work on Anglo-Russian relations.

Princess Michael, whose father was a major in the Nazi SS, worked as an interior designer before becoming an author specialising in books on European royalty.

Labelled “Princess Pushy” by the tabloids, in many ways she has proved more of a controversial figure than her husband.

She once suggested older members of the Royal family were “boring” and caused a stir when she said Diana, Princess of Wales was “uneducated” and had found it hard to cope with her royal status having grown up without a mother.

Princess Michael was once described as “too grand for us” by none other than the Queen.

Princess Michael has claimed her poor public image was the deliberate creation of a media which disliked her because she was “foreign and Catholic”.

She was forced to apologise in 2017 after wearing a blackamoor brooch to a Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace.

The gesture prompted controversy as the event was attended by the future Duchess of Sussex, who is bi-racial.

The brooch, depicting the bust of a black person with an opulent gold crown and bust, was a gift that had been worn many times before, but Princess Michael said she was “very sorry and distressed” that it had caused offence and is not believed to have worn it since.

The incident was not the first time Princess Michael had been accused of racism. After an episode in a New York restaurant in 2004, when she was said to have told a group of African-American diners to “go back to the colonies”, she attempted to repair her reputation with an interview which only exacerbated the controversy.

“I even pretended years ago to be an African, a half-caste African, but because of my light eyes I did not get away with it, but I dyed my hair black,” she told ITV.

“I travelled on African buses. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted experiences from Cape Town to right up in northern Mozambique.”

In 2018, Aatish Taseer, a former boyfriend of the couple’s daughter, Lady Gabriella Windsor, claimed Princess Michael had named two black sheep Venus and Serena.

The 6ft tall Princess has always been outspoken, once boasting that her children were “better educated” than their cousins. She is likely the only person with the audacity to announce after arriving 40 minutes late to dinner with the Queen: “Please don’t get up, anyone.”

The couple’s children have also failed to escape controversies. Mr Taseer’s article in Vanity Fair claimed that he and Gabriella did drugs and skinny-dipped in the Buckingham Palace pool. Lord Frederick admitted taking cocaine in 1999.