These Are The Most Lavish – And Unnecessary – Things Royals Have Spent A Fortune On

Nearly half of Swaziland's population lives on a single dollar a day, but that doesn't stop the royal family from spending their money lavishly. Known for frequently flaunting their wealth on social media, the Swazi royal family has hosted birthday parties underwater, maintained extremely profligate holidays, and displayed a particular penchant for gold leaf.

Their extravagant lifestyle, flagrantly boasted online, has angered the Swazi public, and an activist group called SwaziLeaks takes to social media to spread awareness about the exorbitant spending.

Collecting cars is apparently a favorite pastime of the royal and wealthy. The Sultan of Brunei, who has made his family worth over $20 billion, has an extensive car collection containing the most expensive vehicles. He even has custom-made Bentleys, Bugattis, Ferraris and Rolls Royces.

His Rolls Royce is even coated completely in 24k gold. 

Royal weddings are bound to be extravagant, but the 1979 wedding of Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed Rashid al Maktoum and Hind Bint Maktoum takes the cake. the wedding cost a whopping $137 million — more than double Prince William and Kate Middleton's.

The wedding lasted a full week, and a brand new stadium capable of holding 20,000 people was built just for the lavish occasion. Five of those days were declared a public holiday, and the family chartered 34 private jets to transport their guests to the event.

The Dutch royal family may be small, but that doesn't mean they aren't expensive. In fact, they recently became the most expensive royal family in Western Europe, costing their taxpayers approximately $31 million a year. To put these numbers in perspective, they cost four times more than the Spanish royal family, even though the Netherlands are only a third of Spain's size, making the burden on the Dutch people that much heavier. They also cost more than the United Kingdom, thanks to a 16% budget cut for the House of Windsor.

Besides being expensive, they are also fairly wealthy, despite rumors – albeit vehemently denied – that they lost up to $100 million in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

The world's most expensive home is a $300 million French chateau near Versailles, and it is owned by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The manor took three years to build after developers destroyed a beautiful but decaying 19th century chateau. Crown Prince Mohammed's home boasts full smart-wiring capabilities All of the lights, heat, and even fountains in Mohammed bin Salman's home can be turned on by a smart phone from anywhere in the world, and the location was even considered as a wedding venue for Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.

Despite the hefty price tag, the home isn't the most expensive thing the Saudi Crown Prince has purchased. He owns a $450 million painting – controversially attributed to Leonardo da Vinci – and a nearly $500 million yacht.

The last Romanovs are most famous for their brutal demise at the hands of the Bolsheviks, but another, more lighthearted fact about the royal family is that they, specifically Tsar Nicolas II, loved extravagant clothing. Some of their clothes were part of an exhibit at the Victoria and Albert museum in 2008, demonstrating just how lavish these clothes really were. For Nicolas's coronation, the family wore excessively long fur-trimmed mantles – his mother's was more than 20 feet long, and required seven people to carry it. Nicolas and his wife Alexandra's mantles used 2,691 ermine skins.

One of his dress cloaks was so bedecked in jewels and fur it was given to the armory after Nicolas wore it to a 1903 ball.