It’s difficult, obviously, to verify whether or not princesses Beatrice and Eugenie have actually woken up with severed horse heads in their respective beds, but it’s clear nonetheless that the Firm has made them both an offer they can’t refuse. Like Brando’s Don Corleone, lightly slapping Johnny Fontane around the chops in The Godfather, Beatrice and Eugenie have allegedly been told by Royal HQ, “Come to Sandringham and celebrate Christmas with the family. But leave those deadbeat parents behind. Capeesh?”
It is, of course, exactly like something from a mobster movie, and certainly a supreme test of loyalty for the princesses who, according to an “insider” who blabbed to the Mail on Sunday, are completely stressed by this “tug-of-love” dilemma. Like Michael Corleone in The Godfather: Part III, just when they thought they were out, they get pulled back in (I can do this all day).
They have to choose, ultimately, between family and “Family”. The first option involves Christmas with disgraced parents Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson, who are both toxic with the stink of former BFF, handy cash-cow and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The pair will allegedly spend one final yuletide season in Andrew’s 30-room Royal Lodge mansion before he is shipped off to a “run-down farm” on the Sandringham estate that is reportedly being prepared for his arrival (lots of pizza ovens, but no antiperspirants required). At Royal Lodge this Christmas, however, and worryingly, according to biographer Andrew Lownie, Sarah and Andrew are planning to, “do all sorts of entertaining”. Ewwwww. That “all sorts” is not particularly helpful in context. Fingers crossed they’ll stop at Twister and a few rounds of the Traitors card game.
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The second Christmas option is a respectful observance of tradition and duty. It’s an ennobling piece of Royal PR that involves a significant celebration of an uncle whose work ethic is impeccable and whose dignified battle with cancer is inspiring, and with a female cousin who has quietly emulated those same traits, before and away from the media glare. And so, remind me, this is a dilemma how?
And yes, of course, no one said that Christmas at Sandringham was supposed to be a riotous reboot of It’s a Royal Knockout. Although if Prince Edward’s around, and enough gin martinis (the King’s favourite tipple) have been quaffed, it’s not hard to imagine a dusty cupboard raided, followed by the emergence of several pantomime horses, some wacky knights outfits and a still keen Nicholas Lyndhurst and Toyah Willcox (both original contestants).
Elsewhere, specifically in the Oscar-nominated Lady Di biopic Spencer, Christmas in Sandringham has been depicted as aristocratic torture trauma designed to humiliate emotionally complex individuals who balk at the annual weigh-in. Here guests are weighed, on arrival and departure, nodding to an Edwardian ritual proving that satisfactory meals have been consumed and an extra 3lb, roughly, added. Spencer, though, was a ridiculous psychodrama that painted Sandringham as a site of gothic horror and was filmed almost entirely in Germany. Nuff said.
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At least Meghan had a good Christmas in Sandringham. She said so during her Netflix “documentary” Harry & Meghan. And everything in that hard-hitting piece of factual entertainment was, as we know, 100 per cent bang on. “Oh my gosh, it’s amazing, just like a big family, like I always wanted,” said Meghan, recalling an excitable phone chat to her mother, from Sandringham in 2017, just after she’d arrived, and presumably still giddy from the high jinks of the weigh-in. And when she says “like a big family, like I always wanted” she means the numbers, surely? And definitely not a big family where you argue, and make up, and have difficult conversations, and debate each other, and reconcile, and fight again, and don’t just grab your clueless husband and flee the country in a wobbly-lipped meltdown the minute someone offends your inviolate sense of self? “There’s just this constant, movement, and energy,” Meghan added, about Sandringham and her new family. So yes, it’s the numbers.
The constant movement and energy of a Sandringham Christmas apparently starts on Christmas Eve with the long-established (it began with King George V) practice of giving each other inexpensive yet “humorous” gifts. Princess Diana, infamously and according to biographer Andrew Morton, was once given a pair of “fake bosoms” (not misogynistic in any way, nope), the Queen received a “Big Mouth Billy Bass” animatronic singing fish, and the King was allegedly the recipient, from Princess Anne, of a white leather toilet seat (something about the throne). When asked about the loo seat, in 2018, the then Prince Charles replied, “Don’t believe that crap.” Meanwhile, I believe that one year Andrew, for his inexpensive side-splitter, was given a nifty moral conscience, but then he returned it directly after Christmas, having no use for it (OK, I made that one up).
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Christmas Day, meanwhile, includes the stroll to the church, the meet’n’greet with the frozen yet oddly grateful royal watchers, and then a dinner of goose or turkey followed by a communal viewing, on telly, of the Monarch’s speech. I know. That one floored me. Really? What can you say? Nailed it there, Dad! Ooooh, I loved that bit near the end uncle Chuck! Great special effects bro! Still, once the speech is over the best is yet to come. Christmas cake, pastries and chocolate yule log. Good god. I think 3lb is optimistic. Poor Beatrice and Eugenie. And they still have to endure, allegedly, a night of parlour games that include charades and bingo.
Hmmm. After all that I think the choice for the princesses is probably much clearer now. Especially when you really think about everything that’s involved. So, yes, Sandringham it is.
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