Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the royal formerly known as Prince, is still reeling off demands and making ultimatums about his future living arrangements, the Daily Beast’s Royalist can reveal.
He is demanding a substantial “six or seven bedroom” house on the Sandringham Estate, complete with staff, including a cook, gardener, housekeeper, driver, and police security, sources have told the Daily Beast.
A friend of Andrew said, “Andrew has done exactly what has been asked of him, and he just wants to be left alone.”
Asked to comment on a report in the British news magazine Private Eye this week, that suggested that Andrew is still negotiating where exactly he will live on the Sandringham Estate, the friend said, “He is giving up the lease on one of England’s finest houses and expects to be treated fairly.”
A former courtier told the Daily Beast: “Knowing Andrew, this was always going to be about money. Andrew is essentially being bought out of the lease, so he will haggle over every last detail of the deal.”
Andrew’s reluctance to settle is being blamed in some quarters for a new timeline leaking out of the palace via U.K. newspapers, suggesting Andrew might stay at Royal Lodge for several more months.
Not helping matters is the revelation that the king’s other brother, Prince Edward, has been paying rent of—checks notes—“one peppercorn” for his palatial home, Bagshawe Park.
How the BBC covered up for Martin Bashir over his Diana inteview
Thirty years after it aired, the BBC interview that defined the public image of Diana, Princess of Wales, is being recast as something far darker—and possibly fatal—in a new book by former BBC journalist Andy Webb.
Webb, who sat down with the Royalist this week for a fascinating interview, is the author of Dianarama: The Betrayal of Princess Diana. He argues that Martin Bashir’s 1995 Panorama scoop was not just obtained by deceit, but helped push Diana onto the path that ended in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel less than two years later.
Had the BBC not concealed how it was secured, Webb believes, Diana “might not have died in the way she did.”
His thesis rests on years of reporting and thousands of pages of BBC emails dragged out via Freedom of Information requests.
Webb shows how Bashir produced forged bank statements suggesting that staff around Earl Spencer were being paid by hostile media and shadowy “intelligence” interests. The documents, first shown to Spencer, “hooked” Diana, leading her to believe the BBC had uncovered a conspiracy against her.
Already deeply suspicious of her husband’s circle, Diana was primed to believe Bashir’s claims that courtiers, bodyguards, a nanny, and even her private secretary were betraying her.
Webb contends that Panorama helped blow up what remained of her marriage, hastened her divorce, and contributed to her decision to shed police protection and long-standing staff—people who might later have urged caution on that fatal Paris night.
Inside the BBC, Webb describes a parallel story: alarmed whistleblowers were sidelined, while senior managers accepted Bashir’s reassurances. An internal inquiry in 1996 declared Bashir “honest.”
Only in 2021 did the Dyson report finally state that Bashir had acted deceitfully and that the BBC had fallen “far short” of its own standards in a subsequent cover-up. Webb argues Dyson still stopped short of examining how thoroughly the corporation buried the truth.
His book lands as the BBC endures fresh crises and as director-general Tim Davie departs, his tenure bookended by Panorama scandals.
Webb, who keeps a small picture of Diana taped to his computer, says the question that now hangs over the BBC is brutally simple: if this is what it did to the most famous woman in the world, why should anyone else trust it?
William skips Christmas lunch again
Prince William will once again skip King Charles’s Christmas lunch at Sandringham, the royal house in Norfolk, England. This will be, at least, the third consecutive year he has chosen not to join his father for the traditional gathering—and his absence underscores the increasingly strained relationship between the monarch and his heir.
Sources told the Royalist that while William, Catherine, and their children will attend the Christmas morning church service “with big smiles pasted on,” they will return to nearby Anmer Hall rather than go to the main house for lunch.
One friend of King Charles insisted there is no rift, but several insiders say that tensions between father and son have deepened dramatically over the past year.
Central to the strain is King Charles’s continued support for his brother Andrew’s daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, whom he plans to continue including in royal occasions, despite the reputational damage associated with their father.
William, whose operation is run by young advisers acutely attuned to digital optics, views the king’s endorsement of the York sisters as a dangerous liability. Charles recently awarded Beatrice a major royal patronage with the Outward Bound Trust—just days after she attended high-profile events in Saudi Arabia—prompting further disquiet in William’s camp.
The dispute goes beyond Christmas optics.
William is troubled by the opaque rental arrangements that allow Beatrice and Eugenie to maintain grace-and-favour homes in London, echoing the long-misleading assurances that Andrew paid “commercial rent” for Royal Lodge, which ultimately amounted to a “peppercorn per annum.”
There has been a series of flashpoints between Charles and William this year.
The Royalist first reported a “very strained” relationship in August, noting William’s belief that Charles’s monarchy remains pompous and outdated, while Charles views his son’s prioritisation of family life over constant public visibility as a dereliction of duty.
Incidents such as William’s initial reluctance to attend the funeral of Pope Francis, and his refusal to participate in the VJ Day commemorations, exacerbated the divide.
Behind it all lie deeper scars: William’s childhood trauma, his resentment over his parents’ separation, and clashing visions for the monarchy’s future.
Charles believes in relentless duty; William believes in modernization and boundaries. Their offices speak mainly through intermediaries.
And now, for the third year running, the two men will break bread apart on Christmas Day—a symbolic reminder of a royal relationship under immense strain.
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