What's Next for Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie After Their Parents' Public Disgrace?

As the former Prince Andrew continues to lay low following his arrest and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, has gone into hiding after the Epstein files revealed her toadying worship of a sex criminal, the British monarchy is in, to put it mildly, a state of flux. This is the first time in quite a while that anti-royal sentiment has dominated the press and public discourse surrounding the Windsors. Calls for massive reforms to the institution are becoming harder to ignore, especially as the loudest voices preaching it seem to be coming from typically pro-monarchy publications like the Daily Mail.

But what of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, I hear nobody asking? What of Andrew and Sarah’s daughters, who find themselves in the unenviable position of increased scrutiny and scorn, mostly because their parents are such losers? People just dedicated its latest cover to the topic of the fallen house of York, with lots of focus on the princesses. They’re not working royals but continue to use the princess title, unlike most of their cousins. They have full-time jobs in other areas but have also been accused of cashing in on their royal names and making unsavoury business deals in places like the Middle East. If the British royal family is to survive by slimming down to a European-style monarchy with only the main circle being paid for, all the cousins and hangers-on will be cut out of the fold, and that includes the Yorks. Andrew spent years demanding that his daughters get costly security, high-coverage duties, and all the privileges of their birth. Now, that might go away.

One of the biggest sources for this People is Andrew Lownie, who wrote the scathing Yorks biography Entitled. He’s spent the past few months on a victory lap of sorts, having been proven right about basically every claim he made about Andrew and Sarah, and for calling out the rest of the royals for helping to abet and cover up for Andrew for years. He’s not much kinder to the princesses, of whom he says, “Their economic prospects depended on remaining within the royal family. Their jobs in client relations are based on being princesses.”

The release of new Epstein-related material has sharpened questions about what Beatrice and Eugenie themselves knew. The sisters appear in the files, which reference a lunch with Epstein alongside their mother at his Palm Beach home in 2009, days after his release from prison on charges of soliciting sex from a minor. We know that Sarah borrowed money from Epstein and had some of her debts paid off by him. The files allege that Epstein paid for some of the princess’s flights, and that he requested royal palace tours from them. While one cannot blame two then-teenage girls for going along with their mother on something they may not have known or understood, there are still a lot of questions over how entrenched they were in their parents’ lives and business dealings.

Now, they’re at risk of being shut out of the inner Windsor circle by their uncle Charles and cousin William. It was recently reported that the Yorks were uninvited from Royal Ascot, one of the biggest social events in the royal calendars, and one of their favourites. Barring a princess from being around horses is the cruellest of punishments, apparently.

On a purely human level, I do have some sympathy for Beatrice and Eugenie. Imagine having to deal with your embarrassing parents being revealed to the world as an accused rapist with a paedophile BFF and a wannabe fangirl to said sex criminal who begged to marry him over email. It’s not their jobs to be their parents’ keepers, and being ostracised by your extended family for it must hurt. But they are still literal princesses who have benefitted from that immense privilege from birth and have been cloistered from reality by its power. Unlike, say, their cousins Zara Phillips or Louise Wessex, who don’t use their titles, the York sisters do. But they don’t do any duties with it. It’s all the privilege and none of the work, and that’s fallen under the microscope for good reason. Their parents got away with a lot of scamming, greed, and nastiness because they had titles.

Do we need these princesses at all? I’d argue we don’t need royals at all — I know, a hot take from me — but Beatrice and Eugenie’s weird liminal space in the system seems untenable. They’re both married, have kids, and have non-royal jobs, so why keep them around within this taxpayer-funded system, even without the sweaty elephant in the room raising questions about their potential culpability in corruption and sleaze? If you were them, wouldn’t you just disappear into the ether with your rich husband and stop returning your dad’s calls?

But getting rid of them, or ‘downsizing’ the monarchy, also reveals the flimsiness of the entire concept of royals. We’re supposed to uphold them as being better than us mere mortals, so untouchable and special that they rise above the fray of the plebs. The only way to maintain that illusion is to never question it. Now, all we do is question it: How did Andrew get away with being a crooked trade envoy for so many years? Who knew about his Epstein friendship? Who footed the bill for his settlement to Virginia Giuffre? Why do these royals keep doing business deals to make money from their titles when they’re so lavishly funded by our taxes? Cutting one former prince out for breaking the rules only exposes that these people are indeed corruptible and that it’s never just one bad apple.

Do you know how we can fix this entire problem? By abolishing the monarchy.