Royal Ascot has been scrubbed off Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie’s social calandar with the Palace reportedly banning them from the event in light of their parents, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and Sarah Ferguson’s links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
It’s a sad and cruel blow for the sisters, who until now have considered the horse racing event in June — a favourite of their grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth II — a basic normality of their existence. This was the place where the “blood princesses” could not only show their support for the wider family, but also show off some wild and wacky headgear too.
But it’s over. No longer will they join senior royals in the royal procession in fancy carriages or take their seats in the royal box. In a situation described succinctly by friends of the princesses as a “never-ending sh** show” regarding their parents, this latest move has “blindsided” them, according to the Mail on Sunday. And it doesn’t stop at a day at the races either. They are not invited to any other royal events for the “foreseeable future”. How much worse can it get?
With millions of Epstein files still waiting released, the answer to that question suggests, probably a lot worse. And the sisters will be left to pick up the pieces of the shattered lives left in their wake.
Whatever their father may deserve, it can’t have been much fun watching him being dragged by the police on suspicion of misconduct in public office. While the rest of the world may have revelled in the humiliation of the former prince as he was held at Aylsham Police Investigation Centre in Norfolk for 11 hours, the girls will have been left trying to explain it to his grandchildren.
And now thanks to their father’s public disgrace, Beatrice, 37, and Eugenie, 35, have been cast out in the cold even further than they could ever have imagined possible. Prince William reportedly already warned royals not to be photographed anywhere near them for the “rest of the year”.
The only royal left in a possibly worse position is Prince Harry, who of course understands exactly how it feels to be persona non grata, and is rumoured to have offered his cousins a listening ear and a safe refuge at his Montecito home with his wife Meghan in California. This is the most intense family cooling-off session imaginable — and it must be blowing their minds.
The sisters have their own, no doubt complicated, relationship with both their father and mother. They will need to make sense of any remaining sinew of loyalty to their disgraced parents, while disentangling themselves from the increasing horror of the situation.
My heart goes out to them — and yes I feel huge sympathy for their plight. I never thought I’d say that, or care so much, but the fact Beatrice and Eugenie, like me, have young children and are mums makes the shame and rumours swirling around family dysfunction and wrongdoing far worse.
How will they broach the ins and outs of their family madness with Beatrice’s daughters, Sienna, four, and Athena, one, as well as her nine-year-old stepson Edoardo, and Eugenie’s sons, August, five, and Ernest, two? How do you explain that they won’t see parts of their wider family in public anymore — unless it’s under the cover of darkness? It’s one thing reconciling their own egos and vanity with not being part of the royal “show” any more, but how do you explain this new “keep out of the way” lifestyle to their children?
While they are living this public reality, I know how painful it can be to feel like an outcast in an extended family. I became estranged from mine after a spat over my late dad’s will — and the toxic fallout had started years earlier when I was his sole carer. I also have to explain a milder version of this to my children every Christmas and at birthdays — and the sadness I feel about it is crushing.
They will feel like they are dragging their own families into a drama that is not of their making. Known to be polite and thoughtful, the York sisters have had to cope with the chaos their parents have brought since they were small.
On the surface it might all look like pretty dresses and tea parties at the palace, but the girls have endured a life marked by divorce, lewd public headlines, and a father known for his arrogant demeanour, alongside a grift-prone mother all their lives.
Despite Sarah calling herself and Andrew the “happiest divorced couple in the world” after separating and divorcing in 1996, it was clearly never the full picture. A childhood with a desperate, needy mother must have taken its toll on Beatrice and Eugenie. While Fergie would happily refer to herself and her girls as “The Tripod”, it hints that her daughters were propping her up instead of being parented properly.
This might explain their own bad judgements. It has been reported that Beatrice helped advise her mother on how to get back into Epstein’s good books, and that she also encouraged her father to take part in the catastrophic Newsnight interview in 2019. There are fears that the princesses may have had indirect financial links to Epstein. Anything feels possible with Sarah and Andrew at the helm.
You only have to look at the family photo of the Yorks at Beatrice’s 18th birthday party at Royal Lodge in Windsor in 2006 — which Jeffrey Epstein attended — to realise how surreal their world was. Sarah, Beatrice and Eugenie, dressed in period costumes resembling something from Frozen, with Andrew in military attire, looked more like characters on the set of Bridgerton than members of a modern royal family.
Not only have they long been a laughing stock, now they are having to face the reality of seeing their father kneeling on all fours over a female lying on the floor and read how their mum once told Epstein that she was waiting for Eugenie to return from a “shagging weekend”. It just adds to dysfunction that they have had to endure all their lives.
The Epstein files shown revealed their mother told Epstein “Just marry me”, referred to him as the “brother I always wished for” and asked him “When are you going to employ me” . We now know they were reportedly taken to lunch with Epstein in 2009 at his Palm Beach home less than a week after he was released from prison for soliciting a child for prostitution. We also know Andrew sent photos of his daughters to Epstein in 2010 and 2011 of Beatrice climbing Mount Blanc and Eugenie in a charity bike ride.
Of course what the girls are going through is nothing compared to the trauma of Epstein’s victims, who recall years of being used and abused and trafficked to some of the most powerful men in the world. But the shame of knowing your father was cosying up with a paedophile and having his sex life sliced and diced by millions is bound to cause deep shame and pain.
So where do they go from here?
At one point, Beatrice was rumoured to be preparing to move Sarah into a modest granny annexe at her Cotswolds home after she was reportedly forced out of Royal Lodge. Luckily for Beatrice, that never materialised. Instead, Sarah is believed to have travelled to the French Alps to stay with friends before later taking refuge at the world-renowned £13,000-a-day Paracelsus Recovery Clinic in Zurich, Switzerland, over a month ago.
How does any child come to terms with such parental betrayal and shame by association. I hope they both have access to strong emotional support and that, in time, can build happy and stable lives far removed from the current nightmare.
I truly believe the best thing Beatrice and Eugenie could do is step away from royal life, relinquish the public burden of their titles, and focus fully on raising their families in a calm and stable environment — something they themselves were rarely afforded. They should devote their lives to meaningful work and ensure there is never even a whisper of hypocrisy in the paths they choose.
The sisters have survived a childhood defined by chaos, scandal, and parental misjudgements. Now, as mothers themselves, they face the cruel irony of protecting their own families from a world their parents helped to make so incredibly messy. Walking away from the glare of public life may not erase the past, but it will gift them something more precious: the chance to raise their children in calm, stability, and dignity — and finally live a life that belongs to them alone
Good luck to them. They’ll need it.
