Author Says King Charles and Prince Andrew’s Royal Lodge Dispute Is ‘Part of a Wider Fight’ About Other Royals
King Charles III and Prince Andrew’s Royal Lodge dispute isn’t simply about living arrangements, a royal author says. It may be part of a “wider fight” relating to other members of the British royal family; his daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.
Prince Andrew’s concerned he ‘might never get back in’ the Royal Lodge if he leaves
The Duke of York’s longtime home, the Royal Lodge, may not be his for much longer. King Charles reportedly wants Andrew out of the property which the 63-year-old currently occupies along with his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson.
The duke doesn’t need “such a large garden and house,” Andrew Lownie, a royal biographer, told the U.K.’s Express. Located in Windsor, England, nearby Windsor Castle, the Royal Lodge boasts 30 rooms, with the surrounding grounds totaling 98 acres.
“Andrew has a lease with the Crown Estates in return for paying for renovation and upkeep and he has honoured that,” Lownie said. However, the duke reportedly refuses to vacate the Royal Lodge, even temporarily, concerned he “might never get back in.”
“The optics might not look good for a non-working royal but he is within his rights,” the Traitor King author said. “Status matters to him – as he reminds everyone constantly he was the second son of the monarch – and he feels he is entitled to stay.”
Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie may be part of the reason why Andrew refuses to leave the Royal Lodge
It seems the Royal Lodge disagreement is more complicated than the king wanting his 63-year-old brother out and the Duke of York wanting to stay. According to Lownie, there’s another layer to it, Andrew’s daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie.
“This is also part of a wider fight with his brother, which goes back to having security removed from his daughters, not gracing the balcony,” Lownie said.
Years before Prince Harry’s legal battle for U.K. police protection, Beatrice, 34, and Eugenie, 33, lost their security detail. In 2011, a report suggested Eugenie incurred a six-figure security bill at taxpayers’ expense while traveling through India, Thailand, South Africa, and the United States.
King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, intervened, according to royal author Angela Levin. He suggested security wasn’t a necessity as Beatrice and Eugenie weren’t on their way to becoming working royals.
“Prince Charles decided that as they were not likely to be very senior royals, that this was too much for the public to pay, so he stopped that,” Levin said in Beatrice and Eugenie: Pampered Princesses?, a U.K. TV program (via Mirror).
As for how Andrew reacted, Levin claimed the duke “was so angry that he wrote a note” to Queen Elizabeth II in a failed attempt to retain Beatrice and Eugenie’s security.
Andrew, the commentator said, told his late mother he “wanted them to be considered as proper royals. He did not want the protection officers to leave them.”
Andrew currently resides at the Royal Lodge while Beatrice and Eugenie live elsewhere
The Duke of York hasn’t changed his address quite yet. At the time of writing, Andrew’s primary residence is still the Royal Lodge, where Sarah is recovering from surgery following a breast cancer diagnosis.
“[Andrew’s] protector, the Queen, has gone, and the family see him as an embarrassment,” Lownie said. “But he has never been one to be pushed around. Self-awareness is not one of his qualities. He’s certainly not thinking of the wider interests of the royal family.”
Meanwhile, Beatrice and Eugenie don’t live at the sprawling property with their parents. Although they did spend what Ferguson described as an “incredible weekend” at the Royal Lodge in June 2023.
Beatrice used to live in London, England, at St. James’s Palace. Today, however, she calls the English countryside home. She and her husband, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, live in the Cotswolds with their daughter, Sienna.
Kensington Palace’s Ivy Cottage is Eugenie’s U.K. base, while she and her husband, Jack Brooksbank, plus their two children, split their time between England and Portugal.
