It’s been another annus horribilis for the royal family.
King Charles — who just can’t seem to catch a break since his coronation — and Kate Middleton both faced cancer diagnoses that took them out of public life for some time, leading to months of wild rumors about the Princess of Wales’ health. Queen Camilla was temporarily knocked out by pneumonia. Princess Anne suffered a nasty fall and was kicked by a horse. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle continue to run their renegade operations from California.
And, once again, Prince Andrew is in the doghouse, after a British high court heard evidence suggesting that an alleged Chinese spy who has been banned from the UK was a “close” confidant of the exiled royal.
Andrew is now off the guest list for the royal family’s annual Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace on Thursday — and he won’t join his brother, King Charles, and the rest of the clan at Sandringham, the monarch’s Norfolk residence, over the holidays. That means he will also miss being photographed with senior royals including Prince William and Kate Middleton during the very public walk to Church on Christmas Day.
Instead, Andrew will be holed up at his reportedly falling-apart Windsor home, Royal Lodge, with his ever-loyal ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, while their daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie each visit their in-laws.
The Duke of York had insisted on being part of the festive Christmas lunch, attended by all extended members of the royal family, but had to be persuaded otherwise by Ferguson, a source confirmed to Page Six.
“The Duchess of York has advised Prince Andrew that this is the best course of action, and he’s accepted that it’s the right and honorable thing to do,” said a York source.
“Nobody wants him in public life and he accepts that,” Hugo Vickers, noted royal historian and friend of the family, told Page Six.
Adding insult to injury: On Tuesday, The Sun quoted an anonymous woman who said Andrew could not take his eyes off her cleavage at an official royal engagement two decades go,
The unidentified events manager, who was 24 at the time, told the outlet she met the royal at an appearance with a doctor she was working for.
“He wouldn’t leave me alone,” she recalled.
These are just the latest debacles for Andrew, 64, after he was forced to leave public life back in November 2019 over his ties to convicted sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
“He has nothing else except riding in the park and golf, his children and grandchildren — that’s all he has, literally nothing,” Vickers said.
The prince is said to be holding on tight to his home, known as Royal Lodge, after Charles made a bid to kick him out earlier this year. Andrew recently found the funds to allow him to stay at the leased 30-room mansion, which reportedly needs hundreds of thousands of dollars in upkeep.
“Andrew doesn’t want to move out of Royal Lodge as he thinks it will make him look guilty when he doesn’t feel guilty … he’s lived there for 22 years,” Vickers said.
After days of intrigue, an anonymity order was lifted in a British court this week to reveal the name of Andrew’s Chinese contact, who has been banned from the UK because of concerns he cultivated links with the royal in an alleged effort to influence British elites on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.
The man, identified Monday as Yang Tengbo, said he wasn’t involved in espionage and had “done nothing wrong or unlawful.”
However, it was revealed that Yang, also known as Christopher Yang, went to Buckingham Palace twice in June 2018.
Page Six has reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment.
The Daily Mail reported that the Palace has “grave concerns” about the depth of Andrew’s involvement with Yang, who referred to himself as the “special envoy of Prince Andrew” and was appointed by the royal as head of his Pitch@Palace China, a “Shark Tank”-style initiative from which the Duke took a cut.
Andrew, who held a trade envoy role at the time, has said he “ceased all contact” with Yang after receiving advice from the British Government.
In a statement, his office told the BBC the royal had met the businessman “through official channels” and there was “nothing of a sensitive nature ever discussed.”
But in a damning revelation, correspondence from Andrew’s senior advisor Dominic Hampshire, dating to 2021, was found by security services on Yang’s phone.
“Outside of [Prince Andrew’s] closest internal confidants, you sit at the very top of a tree many, many people would like to be on,” Hampshire wrote.
More worryingly for palace officials, Hampshire wrote that, after a meeting with Andrew, they had “wisely navigated our way around former private secretaries and we have found a way to carefully remove those people who we don’t completely trust.”
He added that, “under your guidance, we found a way to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out of the house in Windsor” — a reference to Royal Lodge.
There is no clue who these people are, or why they would be so keen to circumvent security.
The High Court judges wrote that Yang had won an “unusual degree of trust from a senior member of the Royal Family who was prepared to enter into business activities with him” — adding that the relationship had developed at a time when the prince was “under considerable pressure” which “could make him vulnerable to the misuse of that sort of influence”.
Questions were raised about the prince’s finances after he reached a 2022 settlement — reported to be as much as $12 million — in a civil sexual assault case brought against him by Virginia Giuffre, who alleged he slept with her when she was 17. The prince has always denied assaulting Giuffre, who he allegedly met through Epstein and Maxwell.
Charles, 75, has urged his brother to move out of Royal Lodge and into nearby Frogmore Cottage, the former home of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, in what the Times of London referred to as “the siege of Royal Lodge.”
Frogmore sits within a secured area of Windsor, while Royal Lodge does not; leaving would dramatically reduce the £3 million (around $3.77 million) annual security bill for Andrew, which the King was paying up until recently.
However, the Times reported, Andrew has now convinced the Palace that he has funds from “legitimate sources to support himself” — even though he no longer receives public money (he does have a Royal Navy pension and, of course, inherited an unknown amount from his parents).
Andrew’s honorary military affiliations and royal charitable patronages were removed by his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth, in January 2022. Sources said she would be wringing her hands over how things have devolved for Andrew, who was always said to be her favorite child.
“The Queen did love him, and was very worried about the whole situation,” a royal insider said. “It was very distressing to her.”
That said, “The King is perfectly aware he’s got to look after his brother,” a senior royal insider told Page Six. “He may not like him, but he will do it.”
Andrew remains close to his daughters and, especially, his ex-wife.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, published this past weekend but conducted well before the latest scandal, Fergie said she would marry him all over again. The pair wed in 1986 and divorced 10 years later, but continue to live together.
“He’s the best, a great man with a great heart, and kind,” she said, adding, “I won’t let him down.”
Ferie recalled how, after her older sister left England for Australia, she became the primary caretaker for her father.
“I was left to look after a sad man,” she said, “which is sort of what I’m doing now.”
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