Do we like Prince William?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent record on the right side of the harm test, with one open question over who bankrolls his flagship prize.
Prince William is the heir to the throne, which means he never got to pick a career so much as inherit a brief. He has made youth homelessness his anchor: he has been patron of the charity Centrepoint for about twenty years, and its marked the milestone in December 2025. His pitch, reportedly, was that he did not want to be an ornamental patron.
The big royal mess of 2026 isn't his, but he's standing next to it. In February his uncle, the former Prince Andrew, was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office after a review of the latest Epstein files, then released while the investigation carried on. The King put out a statement saying the law must take its course. The reporting we read doesn't carry a separate word from William.
On the harm check, the record is clean as far as we could find. In 2016 he became the first royal on the cover of the gay magazine Attitude, telling it “No one should be bullied for their sexuality or any other reason.” In 2024 his office put out a Gaza statement about the “terrible human cost” of the conflict, stopping short of a call for an immediate ceasefire. Where you land on that depends on whether you read it as sensible restraint or as too cautious.
In 2021, after Harry and Meghan's Oprah interview raised allegations about racism in the royal family, William was the first royal to answer directly. Asked on a school visit, he said “We're very much not a racist family.” Coverage said the palace's own 61-word statement had failed to settle the row. That is his denial, and his supporters and the couple's supporters read it very differently.
The live question mark is money. In February 2026 the anti-monarchy group Republic complained to the Charity Commission about the Earthshot Prize's links to DP World and its chairman, after Epstein-related court files mentioned a person of that name. The Commission said it was assessing the concerns, no findings have been made, and Earthshot declined to comment. Separately, AP reported in 2023 that court papers in Harry's case said William received a “very large sum of money” in a 2020 hacking settlement, which the publisher did not accept.
Nothing new has turned up on him lately that we could verify from a solid outlet, and plenty of what floats around is tabloid territory, so we left it out. That's honestly the whole list of recent stains. The good stuff is steady rather than splashy: Centrepoint, a long run of work on homelessness, and a public stand against bullying when it was not yet a royal habit.