After the fall of Andrew, what’s next for Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie?

It may be that others decide for themselves how much they want to be associated with princesses in the future, he suggests. In the meantime, the best way forward for them, he says, will be to move quickly to create their own profiles, separate from those of their parents, if they can do so.

“Given the circumstances, now it’s just week after week [that more damaging revelations emerge] “What they have to try to do is create a public image that differentiates them from their parents,” Fitzwilliams says.[But] How they do it is not at all clear.”

Indeed, it will not be easy at a time when all eyes are on the broader story of his parents’ ignominious ties and, in the prince’s case, their alleged actions.

This month, more details emerged about Andrew’s alleged treatment of Virginia Roberts Giuffre and his conversations with Epstein. In a now widely publicized correspondence, he wrote to Epstein: “We are in this together,” after a photo of him with his arm around a teenage Giuffre was first published in February 2011. He also told Epstein via email to “stay in close contact” and wrote of his desire to “play a little sooner.”

A problem, especially since Andrew told the BBC news night show in 2019 that she broke off her friendship with Epstein in December 2010.

Charging

Meanwhile, excerpts from Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs, nobody’s girlThey allege that Andrew behaved as if he “believed that having sex with me was his birthright.” Giuffre, who claimed she was sexually exploited by Epstein and his wealthy associates, describes three occasions when she claims the former prince sexually assaulted her. She had previously accused him of raping her when she was under 18 years old. Andrew has always denied any wrongdoing.

In September, the storm also arrived in Ferguson. A number of charities dropped her as a patron or ambassador when it emerged that she had hailed Epstein as a “supreme friend” and appeared to apologize for publicly criticizing him.

However, one thing she has long been said to have done well is the way she raised her daughters, says one royal observer. “People always say, ‘They are such nice girls, well-mannered and very well-mannered,’” she says.

Both princesses work to earn a living. Beatrice, 37, has been a private equity analyst for more than a decade and in 2022 created BY-EQ, which describes itself as a “mission-led advisory firm that works with leading technology and market companies to maximize the positive impact they can have.”

Eugenie, 35, who graduated in English literature and art history from Newcastle University in England, has worked for the Hauser & Wirth gallery for the past 10 years.

While the sisters are not official active members of the royal family, they do have HRH titles, something their parents insisted on when they were born, and as a result they have long walked a tightrope.

At times, their desire to combine their own independent careers with sporadic public events presents something of a challenge to the royal family. In October, Princess Eugenie joined forces with Princess Rajwa al-Hussein of Jordan to visit a London psychiatric hospital, then posted the photos on her Instagram account.

The visit highlighted the unique position the brothers occupy in the wider royal machinery: with one foot in and one foot out. Beatriz is one of seven State Councilors who take on official duties on behalf of the King if he is unable to do so. Eugenia is a mentor of the “35 under 35” network of the monarch’s foundation.

They both regularly participate in charity work. Eugenie’s includes her role as co-founder of the Anti-Slavery Collective, which works to eradicate slavery around the world, and as patron of the charity Horatio’s Garden, which creates gardens in NHS spinal injury centres.

Beatrice’s includes her sponsorship of the Northwood African Education Foundation and the Chartered College of Teaching.

Both sisters are also honorary patrons of the Teenage Cancer Trust, which was among the organizations that dropped their mother in September.

It is now in question whether charities, in the future, will be as interested in partnering with any family member, says Fitzwilliams. “When the House of York falls, there comes a point where it is absolutely impossible for future charities to link up with it,” he says. “There is an aura about [the scandal surrounding their parents] which charities will not want to be linked to.”

Charging

In light of recent events, he suspects that things “have changed” for the princesses, who combine their work with family life, as each is married and has children. Eugenie’s husband, Jack Brooksbank, works in real estate in Portugal, and the two split their time between there and Ivy Cottage at Kensington Palace in London, with their sons, Ernest and August. Beatrice is married to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi with whom she has two children, Sienna and Athena.

As a foursome, Beatrice, Eugenie, Andrew and Sarah have always been close. Ferguson has often spoken of the close bond she enjoys with her “girls,” as she calls them, and their relationship is clear in the many happy photographs of the trio posted to their social media channels. She has also continued to defend her ex-husband, with whom she lived at Royal Lodge during the fallout of the Epstein scandal.

Charging

But perhaps it is because of this bond that the sisters have so often been involved in their parents’ scandals.

Indeed, Epstein’s attendance at Beatrice’s 18th birthday party in 2006 has been scrutinized as evidence of her father’s close relationship with him, as well as his efforts to bring him into the royal fold. Apparently unbeknownst to Andrew, an arrest warrant had been issued for Epstein two months earlier.

More than a decade later, in 2019, Beatrice participated in a meeting with the BBC at Buckingham Palace to negotiate the terms of her father’s disastrous relationship. news night interview. She is said to have been skeptical at first, but during the meeting she was convinced it was a good idea and then felt mortified that she hadn’t done more to stop it. It was claimed he cried for days as the former prince was branded a national disgrace.

Now, however, there are signs that public distancing may be underway. Earlier this month, it was reported that Eugenie ended her long-standing tradition of posting a birthday message to her mother on social media when Ferguson turned 66.

More recent reports have suggested that the sisters may now be preparing to publicly disentangle themselves from the scandals surrounding their parents.

“I think they are trapped. There is a very close bond. [and] I’m sure that [the princesses] are supporting parents,” says Andrew Lownie, author of Titled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York.

However, he predicts that in the meantime they will fly “a little more under the radar” with their own business activities. “They’ve both been doing a lot in the Middle East recently. I think that will be put on hold,” he says.

Last year, commentators suggested they were becoming unofficial “cultural ambassadors” in the region after Beatrice appeared at two conferences in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, and Eugenie attended events in Qatar. Last November, Eugenie also flew to Tokyo to appear on stage at a business event held in connection with a deal her father reached with a Dutch company, effectively selling contacts and networks made before his fall from grace.

They have no doubt become accustomed to the negative publicity their parents have attracted over the years, Lownie suggests. He notes that there has been “a lot of sympathy in some quarters that children should not be treated with the same brush.”

Still, they will have to make difficult decisions. They will soon be forced to decide whether to spend Christmas with their parents (which would be, Fitzwilliams suggests, a “catastrophic public relations mistake”) or join the other royals for their symbolic festivities at Sandringham. Not to mention where they decide to position themselves, whether they are more aligned with their parents or royalty. The challenge, Fitzwilliams says, is to avoid becoming “subsumed in a tide of horror.”

Charging

That can mean a certain firmness and determination. “The only way to act now is to never be photographed with your parents, and try to distance yourself as much as possible,” he says. “This is a difficult time for them. It is deeply distressing and they must feel it desperately.”

The Telegraph, London

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