King Charles has made it clear to nieces Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie that they have to “stand on their own two feet” amid a financial overhaul and following Andrew Mountbatten Windsor’s latest scandal, a royal author has claimed. Author Robert Jobson has weighed in on the King’s efforts to “make changes that he hopes will keep the monarchy fit for generations to come” since ascending to the throne in 2022.
Those changes include having non-working members of the Firm, such as Beatrice and Eugenie, pay their own way in a bid to stop them from using royal residences as “subsidised accommodation”. In Mr Jobson’s book, The Windsor Legacy, segments of which have been serialised by the Mail, it is alleged that one of the issues that mainly frustrates the monarch, as he confided to his friends, is that the Palace was “being run like a hotel, and not a very good one”.
A source said: “Over time, that is all going to change. Properties will be let at commercial rates going forward, and to people outside the family. Where it is in a Palace environment, they will, of course, be security vetted.”
Another one added: “The King isn’t running a housing association for distant relatives.”
Princess Beatrice lives in a farmhouse in the Cotswolds with her husband, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi and their children; however, she splits her time between that and a state-funded flat in St James’s Palace in London.
Her sister, Eugenie, splits her time between Portugal and the UK alongside her husband, Jack Brooksbank.
When in the UK, the younger daughter of Andrew, Mountbatten-Windsor, lives at Ivy Cottage, which is located within the grounds of Kensington Palace.
It comes as their father, Andrew, has officially lost all his titles and honours after the King issued a Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the Realm, which was published in The Gazette, the UK’s official public record, by the Crown Office.
The former prince has agreed to leave Royal Lodge and is set to move to the King’s private Sandringham estate in Norfolk sometime in the new year as he begins his internal exile.
