Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie have spent the week outside the United Kingdom as their father, Andrew, was ordered to leave his long-time Windsor home and stripped of his remaining royal styles, titles and honours under a formal process initiated by King Charles III. The sisters’ movements — Beatrice photographed at a business conference in Riyadh and Eugenie appearing in a friend’s photo from Paris — coincided with an unprecedented step by the Palace that will see their father cease to be styled as a prince and vacate Royal Lodge, the 30-room residence in Windsor Great Park he has occupied since 2003. The developments set two parallel tracks: the York sisters continuing private and professional travel away from Britain and the King’s decision to sever Andrew’s remaining formal ties while citing “serious lapses” in judgment linked to his association with the late Jeffrey Epstein.
Buckingham Palace said the King had begun “a formal process to remove the style, titles and honours of Prince Andrew,” adding that Andrew “will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.” The same statement confirmed that formal notice had been served to surrender Andrew’s Royal Lodge lease and that he would move to alternative private accommodation on the Sandringham estate, with the Palace emphasising that the monarch’s “thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.” The Palace said the measures were necessary “notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him.” The decision, supported by the Prince of Wales according to officials, reflects a conclusion inside the Royal Household that Andrew’s judgment around Epstein had caused sustained reputational damage to the monarchy.
The formal move means the removal from Andrew of the titles Prince, Duke of York, Earl of Inverness and Baron Killyleagh, as well as the style His Royal Highness, and the honours of the Order of the Garter and the Royal Victorian Order. While he had previously ceased using HRH, this is the first time Buckingham Palace has set out, in a public statement, a process to remove the style, peerages and remaining honours in full. Officials said the change of name and status would take effect as legal mechanisms — including royal warrants transmitted to the Lord Chancellor — are completed. The Palace also confirmed that Sarah, Duchess of York, Andrew’s former wife who has shared Royal Lodge with him, will move out and arrange her own accommodation separately.
Against that backdrop, Beatrice and Eugenie were pictured abroad. Beatrice, 37, appeared at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh — the high-profile annual gathering of investors and executives — in photographs published mid-week, while Eugenie, 35, was shown in a Paris selfie posted by a friend on Instagram. The sisters have made no public comment about their father’s situation, and there is no suggestion that their travel was anything other than pre-planned engagements and private time away; however, their absence from Britain during the latest escalation underscored how the fallout from Andrew’s affairs is now being managed almost entirely between the Palace and the King’s advisers.