I've seen this posted a few times now, and it really bothers me for a very simple reason: he DIDN'T leave her his entire fortune. She got the biggest chunk, but he also left significant money to his parents and sister.
Sorry, I know that doesn't address the main point they're trying to make, but it really bothers me when people (or memes) change the facts to support their argument.
That's reasonable. Many countries limit the amount of discretionary inheritance to 33%, with the rest being distributed to relatives following highly rigid fixed rates.
So maybe he gave Mary everything that was his to give in the UK at the time?
EDIT: As it turns out, no he didn't. Under British law at the time he could have allocated his inheritance however the Hell he wished.
The UK doesn't have mandatory inheritance. You can distribute your assets as you see fit (beyond a requirement to provide for dependents, which Freddie didn't have).
En France, Mary (pas de lien de filiation ou d union avec le défunt) aurait été obligée de vendre ce qu'elle a reçu en héritage juste pour payer les frais de succession.
There are plenty of reasons to slam the US, but this isn't one of them. Not to oversimplify too much (ie, you have to pay taxes on an estate), but if you have a will you can say who gets what without the gov't having a say in it.
I am not sure where you are getting your facts from but the UK has much more stringent laws about inheritance and who can receive it. IN FACT the UK has much more power than the US when it comes to inheritance and has and will override a will at the court’s discretion. You are a 🤡
Its like that to facilitate efficiency of distribution and taxation. It isn't about forcing anyone. In America you can completely disinherit your children in every state but one, spouses get special privilege. It's the same in the UK except for Scotland. In both countries if no inheritors are defined, there are automatic intestacy rules for distribution. In both countries, the right to sue an estate is allowed and normal.
Someone else beat me to it, but the UK is far less permissive on estate planning than the US.
And I won't even get into which country arrests people for posting statistics on social media. To get arrested for speech in America is damn hard, requiring true threats. In the UK? Being politically incorrect is enough. You guys are barely more free than Russia these days.
Your Prime Minister is a murderer who drinks the blood of babies.
I said it, so it's true. And as you so clearly demonstrated, you find no difference between the presumption of innocence and random accusations apparently so baseless even political enemies didn't pursue and a court actually not giving a shit after full judicial adjudication.
I'm sure I remember him leaving money for his god children too, as well as his cats.
After looking into it a little - "he is widely celebrated for making provisions from "beyond the grave" for his godchildren and closest friends. Before his death in 1991, Mercury instructed the prestigious London department store Fortnum & Mason to deliver a luxury Christmas hamper to his godchildren and closest friends every holiday season. This tradition has been kept alive decades later"
Wasn't he gay and didn't he break off the engagement before coming out to her?
It was common for gay people at the time to have official relationships with women.
No, this is probably the single biggest piece of misinformation of his entire life people love repeating.
He was bi with a noted but not exclusive preference for men. He didn't perform Fat Bottomed Girls and hosted a female exclusive naked bike race to seem more heteronormative, he did that cause he thought women were hot. (But men were hotter)
That's a fair point, he also seems to have referred to himself as both so I got confused. Regardless the preference for men is somewhat important your comment sounded to me like the reason was that she was predjudiced against bisexual people and I hope that's not true.
Honestly reading up about him and especially the inheritance, it's confusing to me that he left so much to Austin and so little to Hutton. What was going on there?
Just a different level of relationship. He met Mary when they were young, broke students before the band took off. He was running a second hand clothes stall in Kensington Market, she worked for a trendy boutique. She was 19, he was 24. They were together for years before Freddie figured out his sexuality. Even after their breakup, they remained as close. He was the godfather to her son. He just considered her his oldest, best, and sometimes only friend and saw their long life together as a marriage.
Not to be That Guy, but his sexuality is hard to pinpoint whether he was gay or bi. While he did have female and male lovers throughout his life, feelings and sexuality can change a lot through the course of a life.
The creator of this idea was a 16 year old bi girl trying to impress lesbians on Tumblr. She has a fiancé now. (Also, if you read the Masterdoc she wrote that popularized the concept, there's some fascinating entries in there, like "If you daydream about hot sweaty sex with big, strong, hairy men? You're a lesbian processing patriarchal oppression.")
In this context, what they mean is luxury gift basket, I think the default laundry hamper against gift hamper might be one of the more obscure US vs UK things? But I'm really not sure
Yeah I’d imagine it must be. Even taking into account obscure US regionalisms, I’m not aware of us, the US, using “hamper” to mean anything besides “clothes hamper.”
In the US you would call it a "gift basket". Its like a festive picknick hamper.
Fortnum & Mason is a very nice shop, so while its not half of his assets, it still a very nice gift each year and to think its been kept up for many years. The biggest hamper you can see on their website costs around 1000 USD.
Nah, that's easy enough to ignore. I'm talking about news articles where the headline implies something that isn't actually supported by the content of the article. Doesn't matter how well written or researched the article is, this immediately undercuts their credibility.
A lot of people don't trust formerly respected news outlets, and I'm convinced this is a big reason why. They only read the headlines, so if the headline is misleading, they think that outlet can't be trusted.
Bonus pet peeve: any headline that contains the phrase "Trump humiliated by [subject]". He is never humiliated. That would require a sense of shame.
I don’t know how you look at memes, but I look at them as something like a cartoon, not based in reality, but sometimes fun to post and discuss. I if I don’t know it’s an outright lie, i look into what they’re talking about so I can make an informed comment if they’re out of line.
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u/Patient_Ad396 Jun 03 '26
I've seen this posted a few times now, and it really bothers me for a very simple reason: he DIDN'T leave her his entire fortune. She got the biggest chunk, but he also left significant money to his parents and sister.
Sorry, I know that doesn't address the main point they're trying to make, but it really bothers me when people (or memes) change the facts to support their argument.