Well, maybe what happens is that the part of the income that would go to support the Duke was returned to the government or something.
Otherwise you'd have had a situation where, after turning 18, Princess Elizabeth would have had to be given money from the Civil List while the Duchy was hanging onto all the Duchy proceeds, during a period when the country was desperately short of money. That would have been an unacceptably selfish thing for the King to do, and even with the greater deference shown to the monarchy back then, it's unlikely that it would have gone unnoticed. For all anyone knew back in 1944, Princess Elizabeth was going to stay a princess for the next quarter century.
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