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Prince Andrew’s now-infamous alibi that he couldn’t have been with Virginia Giuffre because he was at Pizza Express with his daughters means the York family has to be careful never to be photographed eating pizza again.
So when Princess Eugenie marked her sister’s 37th birthday this week by posting a photo of herself and Princess Beatrice tucking into another Italian snack—a panini—she might have been naïve to think the trolls wouldn’t pounce, with one commenter suggesting the picture “seems to have been taken in Pizza Express in Woking. A regular haunt.”
That the sisters’ innocent lunch snap could become instant meme-fodder is a reminder of the inescapable shadow their father’s scandal casts over even the most banal Instagram post.
It’s a problem baked into their public lives and only made worse by the astonishing revelations contained in Andrew Lownie’s brutal takedown of Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York.
Revelations include, but are not limited to: that Andrew “lost his virginity at eleven” to an escort; that he kept newly wrapped women’s pantyhose, lingerie, and sandals in “his” closet at Jeffrey Epstein’s home; that he had an orgy at a Thai hotel with a stream of sex workers and slept with 12 women in the first 12 months of his marriage. The book also unhelpfully rehashed rumors that he is bisexual and had HIV.
But friends insist that neither princess nor their mother is losing sleep over Lownie’s tome.
Speaking to several of Andrew and Ferguson’s friends this week, I have been struck by how many of them think the controversy will quickly “blow over,” as so many royal scandals often do.
“It would be totally inaccurate to say they are devastated or heartbroken by the book, or any of this crap,” one told The Royalist. “There are absolutely no new revelations—it’s just a rehash of things already said brought together in one place. The family used to wonder when this would ever end; now they know it never will. It’s just, the tide comes in and the tide goes out.”
Another ally of Ferguson told me: “The family have been pilloried and bullied by the British press for generations, so they’re well used to it by now.”
That defiant tone has shaped their response this week. Fergie even seemed to wear her coping strategy on her feet, stepping out at a charity event in velvet evening slippers embroidered with the late queen’s mantra, “Never complain, never explain.”
Certainly, there is no doubt that Queen Elizabeth II would have ignored this tabloid “rubbish,” but a slogan on a pair of slippers misses the fact of the queen’s lifetime devotion to duty and the fact that she didn’t only not explain when it suited her not to. She always shunned personal revelations to such an extent that she never gave a personal interview. Fergie, by contrast, has, it can sometimes seem, spent huge chunks of her life complaining and explaining quite bitterly in venues such as, er, well, Oprah to start with.
Friends of Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie have described them as “innocent victims” and “collateral damage” in the biography of their father, and there are few, I think, who would support the demonization of children solely on the basis of the sins of their father. Lowney suggests in his book that the daughters may be more involved in dodgy deals than they appear at first blush, and if that turned out to be the case, then, of course, the dynamics would change.
For now, however, I feel that most people feel quite sympathetic toward the kids.
As one contemporary of the sisters—who are 35 (Eugenie) and 37 (Beatrice), both with young children—exclusively told The Royalist: “All they have ever done is stand by their parents in the most horrifically public circumstances. I don’t think it’s fair to criticize them for that.
“They’re sweet girls who understand that they are immensely privileged and have always been grateful for the privilege they’ve had and have tried to use it to do the right thing. They were told to get jobs by the firm, and they did that, so it seems unfair to attack them for making money,” the source added.
Ferguson has always commanded more sympathy in the United States than in the United Kingdom. In the U.S., she has largely succeeded in portraying herself as a scrappy underdog, a royal rebel who pulled herself up by her bootstraps, spoke out against the stiff-upper-lip culture of the royal family, and earned plaudits for being honest and open about her mental health struggles and her eating disorder.
For more than a decade, she was a staple target of the British tabloids, which saddled her with cruel, often misogynistic nicknames like “the Duchess of Pork,” a jibe she has repeatedly cited when recalling her time under the media glare.
Yet despite the relentless mockery, the late Queen Elizabeth valued her as a crucial link to Andrew, with one royal confidant telling me she credited her with keeping Andrew from “going completely bonkers.”
The queen’s forbearance, however, was not shared by Prince Philip, who refused to be in the same room as Fergie. Only after his death was she welcomed back to family gatherings.
Philip’s antipathy stemmed from the notorious episode in which she was photographed on holiday having her toes sucked by her then-boyfriend and financial adviser, Texan John Bryan.
Longstanding gossip has suggested that she and Andrew enjoyed a de facto open marriage, with the toe-sucking scandal forcing their divorce. Such theories have been fed by their continued cohabitation at Royal Lodge, Andrew’s residence, where they appear, in many respects, like a married couple.
Those close to them say they occupy separate wings, and while rumors of remarriage surface from time to time, friends dismiss them as tabloid fantasy, noting the absence of any romance and the unwanted attention it would bring.
One friend told The Royalist: “Sarah has seen it all before. She’s a tough old bird, and I don’t think this latest round of ‘revelations,’ which are really just recycled gossip, will make much difference. It’s telling how many of the sources are either anonymous or dead.”
Neither Andrew nor Fergie now have an official spokesperson, and despite repeated approaches by the Daily Beast to former advisers—lawyers, PRs, and media handlers still believed to be in touch with the family—no one has commented on the book or on the princesses’ views.
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The post Princess Eugenie Mistakenly Sparks Unwanted Prince Andrew Flashback appeared first on The Daily Beast.
