Andrew’s exile has put Beatrice and Eugenie in spotlight

The King’s decision to exile his brother over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal will place a new level of strain on princesses Beatrice and Eugenie and lead to further scrutiny of the women’s own privilege – but it may also present them with a new opportunity in the royal fold, experts believe.

Since they were children, the pair have seen their parents mired in one controversy after another, according to royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams. “It’s been a tsunami of troubles.”

The sisters are used to attention. Being stripped of their state-funded security after the cost of guarding Eugenie during gap-year trips to India, Thailand, the US and South Africa reportedly hit £100,000, is believed to have stoked family tensions back in 2011.

Beatrice and Eugenie have been assured that they will remain princesses, despite their father’s demotion to Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and their mother’s – the former duchess of York – to Sarah Ferguson again.

Those titles mean they are trapped in the spotlight. “People feel they have a right to investigate,” says Fitzwilliams. For all their wealth, “it’s most unenviable”.

The King likes the princesses and will be keen for his decision “to not have too much effect on them”, said Ian Lloyd, author of The Queen: 70 Chapters in the Life of Elizabeth II. But the impact on their family unit is unavoidable.

Property remains a thorny issue

Ferguson and Mountbatten Windsor have been living together at the 30-room Royal Lodge since 2008, when they reunited after their divorce 12 years earlier.

The former prince will now be moving to a property on the Sandringham estate at the King’s private expense, but that deal doesn’t include his ex-wife. She must find her own place to live.

“It was virtually an intact family relationship at Royal Lodge, and the girls could call on them. Now that’s all disappearing and breaking down,” Lloyd said.

The writer believes Andrew’s latest humiliation will lead his daughters to “ensure that they’re not seen together”.

In that respect, at least his new home will offer benefits when they do visit, being surrounded by 20,000 acres of land. “Sandringham is one of the hidden royal estates,” Lloyd said. “People can come and go through numerous entrances, and they won’t be seen walking around the grounds with him.”

But property could remain a thorny issue. Questions remain over their state-funded London homes, while neither are on the Civil List or perform any official duties for the Crown.

Beatrice and her husband, the millionaire property tycoon Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, reportedly own a six-bedroom farmhouse in the Cotswolds worth £3.5m, with an outdoor swimming pool and tennis courts. Yet they also have access to a grace-and-favour apartment within St James’s Palace in central London.

Likewise, Eugenie owns a £3.6m home in Portugal together with her husband, wine merchant and marketing executive Jack Brooksbank. But when back in London, they live at Ivy Cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace.

The financial arrangements are not confirmed. Some reports suggest the princesses may pay just peppercorn rents for their royal premises, but experts suspect the charges are likely to be higher following another controversy involving relatives.

In 2001, it emerged that Prince and Princess Michael of Kent paid the equivalent of just £67.30 a week – less than the cost of a council home – to live in a seven-bedroom apartment at Kensington Palace. This embarrassing revelation led the Queen to begin covering the market cost of £120,000 a year using her personal wealth.

Either way, anti-monarchy activists may now start paying more attention to these arrangements.

Graham Smith, CEO of the campaign group Republic, said: “There’s this weird attitude in the country that it’s normal for us to give this family all these homes. Regardless of whether it’s peppercorn rent or anything else, Kensington Palace is an historic property and it should be a museum. We ought to be telling them all to live in their own houses.”

Future opportunities

For all these challenges, Lloyd wonders if Beatrice and Eugenie might eventually end up benefitting from the situation. Might this final confirmation that Andrew will never again serve as a working royal ironically present an opening for his two daughters?

At the moment, neither perform any official royal duties. Beatrice works in private equity and founded her own advisory firm, BY-EQ, in 2022. Eugenie is the director of a London art gallery. But might the King one day request them to help the Firm?

“The monarchy is in a dangerous position at the moment, because there are so few active, working members of the Royal Family,” Lloyd said. “At the time of the King’s accession, there were 11, but they include people like Princess Alexandra who’s just too frail to do anything, and the Duke of Kent who’s also very elderly. So there’s only four of them under the age of 70 that are working.

“They very much need Beatrice and Eugenie. They’ve got their own lives, but it will be interesting to see in the future if they’re incorporated somehow to attend occasional duties, like Palace garden parties, or being in the procession at Royal Ascot, to swell the numbers.”

He does not expect this to happen anytime soon, he emphasises. The Andrew scandal will need to die down first, because “it affects their brand”. But they may also attract more public sympathy.

The Palace has denied suggestions by the journalist Emily Maitlis that Prince William may have threatened to remove the princesses’ titles if they did not convince their father to leave Royal Lodge.

There has been no public sign of Beatrice and Eugenie disowning Andrew, unlike Prince Harry and his very public fallout with his father in recent years over his marriage to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

“They are a close-knit family,” says Fitzwilliams. “Who disagreed with who and all the rest of it, they’ve kept that quiet.”

@robhastings.bsky.social