India McTaggart
London: Princess Eugenie is said to be distancing herself from her parents over the fallout from their association with Jeffrey Epstein.
The younger daughter of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and former wife Sarah Ferguson is understood to be going through a period of not speaking to them.
The Telegraph understands that the 35-year-old is frustrated that the entire York family has been “tarnished” after her disgraced father was stripped of all his titles – including that of prince – and forced to leave his Windsor home by the King.
She is believed to be going through periods of distancing herself from her parents amid the fallout and has not been heavily involved in Mountbatten-Windsor’s or Ferguson’s move from Royal Lodge.
Mountbatten-Windsor is due to vacate the 30-room property as soon as next week. The sighting of multiple removal vans over the past few days prompted speculation that he would move out imminently.
The former Duke of York, who will turn 66 next month, was forced to give up his “cast-iron” lease to the property, shared with Ferguson, after it emerged that he had only paid a peppercorn rent on it for more than 20 years.
Princess Eugenie, who lives in Portugal with her husband Jack Brooksbank and their two children – August, four, and Ernest, two – is understood to have cleared her bedroom there before Christmas.
She is said to be taking a tougher stance in occasionally not speaking to her parents than her elder sister, Beatrice, who has been more involved with her parents’ move.
A source told The Mail on Sunday that Princess Beatrice, 37, was “trying to walk the fine line of not cutting her father off and yet remaining close with the Royal family”, adding: “They aren’t exactly in regular and close contact at the moment, but Eugenie isn’t trying to walk that line. She’s not speaking to him.”
Beatrice and Eugenie chose to spend Christmas Day at the King’s private Norfolk estate at Sandringham, about 225 kilometres away from their disgraced father in Windsor.
They were pictured on the royal family’s annual festive walk to St Mary Magdalene Church, which Mountbatten-Windsor and Ferguson were not invited to join amid the scandals continuing to engulf them over their association with Epstein, the convicted paedophile.
Last month, Mountbatten-Windsor and Ferguson both attended the private christening of Beatrice’s daughter, Athena Elizabeth Rose Mapelli Mozzi, at St James’s Palace. It marked the first time they were known to have been invited into a palace since they lost their titles.
The King has insisted through the fallout that his nieces must be “protected” from the fall of the House of York as Elizabeth II and Prince Philip’s beloved granddaughters.
The princesses have never been working members of the Royal family and both have carved out careers for themselves. Beatrice works as an adviser for Afiniti, an artificial intelligence software firm, and Eugenie is a director at Hauser & Wirth, a contemporary art gallery in London.
In 2022, Princess Eugenie launched a podcast about modern slavery weeks after her father made a substantial donation to a sex-trafficking charity as part of his out-of-court settlement with the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
Giuffre, who took her own life last year, claimed she was trafficked to the United Kingdom and forced to have sex with Mountbatten-Windsor against her will when she was 17. Mountbatten-Windsor has always vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
