Thomas Kingston‘s death on Feb. 25, 2024, shocked the United Kingdom and the royal circle. Wife Lady Gabriella Windsor described him as an “exceptional man who lit up the lives of all who knew him” in an official statement following the news.
Per the BBC, Kingston’s widow described his death as a “great shock to the whole family.” The 45-year-old British socialite was found lifeless in an outbuilding on the grounds of his parents’ £3 million ($3.8 million) mansion in Kemble, Gloucestershire, with a serious head wound and a gun lying next to his body. According to reports, Kingston had had lunch with his mother and father before vanishing. The two went out looking for him and his father, Martin, found him after forcing the locked door. “Police are satisfied the death is not suspicious,” the senior coroner Katy Skerrett said.
What was Thomas Kingston’s relation to the British royal family?
Thomas Kingston married Lady Gabriella Windsor Kingston in 2019 at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip in attendance. Gabriella’s father Prince Michael of Kent and the Queen were first cousins, their fathers King George VI and Prince George were brothers, making the 42-year-old King Charles III’s second cousin. On her mother Princess Michael of Kent’s side, Gabriella is related to the Reibnitz family, belonging to the Austrian aristocracy.
Kingston, who had previously dated Kate Middleton’s sister Pippa, met Lady Gabriella in 2014, reportedly through mutual friends. They announced their engagement in September 2018, after a holiday on the Isle of Sark.
Who is Lady Gabriella Windsor Kingston?
While Kingston was an Iraq war veteran and one of two directors at a private equity firm in London, Lady Gabriella, nicknamed Ella, is a writer and guest editor for The London Magazine, as well as a singer-songwriter, publishing most of her music in support of the non-profit organization Playing for Change Foundation. Some of her songs, which can be streamed on Spotify and Apple Music, include 2023’s “Meridians,” “Before Tomorrow” and “Honeyfields.”
Gabriella is especially passionate about working with Latin American countries and partners. She lived in Argentina for two years after graduating from Brown University in 2004 with a degree in Comparative Literature and Hispanic studies. According to a piece she wrote for The Telegraph in 2018, she was chasing warmer temperatures when she moved to Argentina in 2008 but was so enamored by the region that she ended up staying way longer than initially planned. As of the article’s publishing, Gabriella was working with Branding Latin America, a London-based platform “linking companies on that continent with the rest of the world,” as its arts director, collaborating with artists like the Royal Ballet’s Colombian soloist Fernando Montaño and Panamanian fashion designer Teresita Orillac.
Before Kingston, Gabriella had one other headline-making relationship with Indian-British-American journalist Aatish Taseer in the early 2000s, who would later write about his time with the Windsors, and particularly the controversial and allegedly racist Princess Michael, Ella’s mother, at Kensington Palace and all the complicated and peculiar conversations that ensued. “‘I daren’t even say I want my coffee black anymore. I say, ‘Without milk,”” Taseer recalled of a conversation with the Czech Baroness.
Born Lady Gabriella Marina Alexandra Ophelia Windsor, at St Mary’s Hospital, London, on April 23, 1981, she was 18th in the line of succession to the British throne and is now 56th. She has an older brother, Lord Frederick, who married Sophie Winkleman in 2009. Gabriella and Thomas Kingston didn’t have any children.
