Apparently the former Duke of York’s daughters will keep their royal titles. Hardly headline news, until yesterday you might not have been aware they even had titles. To be honest, I’ve always struggled to remember which sister is which (if it helps – to look at Beatrice is to see a mash up between Fergie and Queen Victoria, and Eugenie is the spit of her father.) Still confused? No matter, for the moment at least the convenient shorthand HRH Princess applies to both. In his slimmed-down-monarchy phase, Charles, the then Prince of Wales, suggested that the girls might relinquish their royal status, but Andrew dug in (he likes titles).
Depending on your age, you might recall that these are the same girls, who as young children endured the tabloid humiliation of their mother’s toes being sucked (or was it licked?) by a Texan financier. Prince Philip’s verdict on his unedifying daughter-in-law was ‘odd and pointless’, in contrast the late Queen commended her parenting style (ahem) and post-separation smuggled Fergie into Balmoral when Philip was at Cowes.
So far, so very odd, and we haven’t even got onto Andrew and that pizza in Woking with daughters who were ‘just a little younger’ than Epstein’s victim, Virginia Guiferrie. According to the latter’s searing memoir, Nobody’s Girl, that is how Andrew knew Virginia was seventeen. Dads and daughters eh? Nothing like weaponising your nearest and dearest. Makes having Fergie as a mum look like a walk in the park.
Perhaps predictably, nor has their adult life always been easy. The tinsel rather came off Beatrice’s fortified 18th birthday party at Windsor Castle when we discovered it was hijacked by her father. To celebrate his daughter’s coming-of-age Andrew invited not one, but two of the world’s most notorious sex predators to stay at The Royal Lodge – if a picture speaks 1000 words make what you will of Harvey Weinstein, Jeffery Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell masked and ready for action in the confines of the Prince’s garden.
Their penchant for dressing up was not lost on the sisters, whose subsequent astonishing upholstery at cousin Prince William’s wedding saw an explosion of Cinderella memes. Things could only get better. Lucky that handsome millionaire Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi came along for oldest sister Beatrice; from a family of Italian counts, a wonderful blend of old and new money, he was also blessed with a party in the Royal Lodge, where the couple capitalised on lockdown to enjoy a wedding in the proximate Royal Chapel of All Saints.
Eugenie hasn’t married quite so well (if we are using Andrew and Fergie’s metrics of money and private jets) but Jack Brookesman looks like a decent chap, a onetime wine merchant with a solid public school education. The wedding was Harry-and-Meghan-style in St In George’s Chapel and there are property interests in Portugal. In other words, despite the very public defenestration of their parents, Beatrice and Eugenie are doing just fine, thank you very much.
Move along then, nothing to see here, Andrew’s daughters are not working royals so butt out. That’s right, unlike for example, the Duchess of Edinburgh and the Duke of Kent, they don’t turn up on a wet Sunday afternoon to unveil a war memorial that really matters to the individuals concerned. Rather they have jobs outside the Firm and partake in a little light charity work.
Recently the princesses have enjoyed several trips to the Middle East, (apparently nothing to do with Andrew’s extraneous international business affairs), Beatrice likes to talk AI in Saudi Arabia and Eugenie deals in art. Why then, given their rich husbands and good prospects, do they both reside in grace-and-favour Crown Estate properties? For the record, Eugenie has a lovely three bedroom house – Ivy Cottage – in the grounds of Kensington Palace and Beatrice an apartment in St James’s Palace. Free-ish (one is never privy to the exact details) accommodation for two princesses. It’s another of those royal quirks, a thread that once pulled, might just keep unravelling. Best not to pull it then, at least so the palace hopes.
The severing of Andrew from the royal body has been referred to as brutal, seismic, unprecedented. And it is also an almighty act of self preservation. The Royal Family want to shut down all and any questions about properties and grace-and-favour (freeloading) tenancies. The never ending public discourse about ‘four star hotels’ for asylum seekers, and the minutia behind a local license for Chancellor Racheal Reeves’s rental property, however, suggests the public care deeply about the cost of living when it comes to other peoples homes.
Until now the braying mob had been held back from the Royal Family, decades of deliberate opacity and Channel 5 documentaries about private palaces a timely reminder that it is different for royalty. But then Andrew came along – a dud hiding out in a gigantic wedding cake – and has muddied the pitch for the rest of the family. In a matter of weeks the public has woken up to the fact we are conveniently clueless about the rules that govern the Windsors. Needless to say, they would much rather keep it that way.
Oh course, if Beatrice and Eugenie really wanted to help the ailing king and keep the republican wolves at bay, they might consider relinquishing the royal titles they inherited from a man who is no longer a prince. As for Edoardo and Jack, surely as traditional conservative men they would be only too willing to pay for their families’ own accommodation. There is nothing more humiliating than being kept by one’s uncle-in-law, or is it the state? But exactly what the going rate should be for an ex-princess to live in a palace, is anyone’s guess. Such are the conundrums of a constitutional monarchy.
Tessa Dunlop is the author of
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