They were once the closest of families, with Sarah Ferguson comparing their tight bond to a table.
“A table goes best with four legs,” the former Duchess of York told HELLO! in 2017. “A table can’t stand on three legs, so you have the Duke and I, and the two girls. We’re a family unit and we lead by example.
“We support each other emotionally and we support each other health-wise. At least every two weeks we sit down together and communicate, the four of us.”
Today, that once-sturdy relationship is looking decidedly wobbly, after Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie found themselves dragged into the scandal surrounding their parents’ friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Last week, further emails emerged from the so-called “Epstein files”, revealing that the late convicted paedophile paid for Sarah and her daughters to fly to the US to have lunch with him at his mansion in Palm Beach, days after he was released from prison in 2009, when the sisters were 19 and 20.
In other messages exchanged by Sarah and Epstein, she makes a crude comment about Eugenie’s love life, calls the financier “the brother I have always wished for” and tells him: “Just marry me.”
Sources tell HELLO! that the crisis is taking its toll on the Princesses, and on the family unit they once held so dear.
“They must be overwhelmed and aghast by this,” the royal author Robert Jobson, who knows the family, tells us. “What was she thinking? Taking her daughters – the late Queen’s granddaughters – to meet this vile convicted criminal? It really beggars belief.”
Despite the sisters’ humiliation, a friend of the family denies reports that Eugenie, 35, who co-founded the charity The Anti-Slavery Collective, has cut off contact with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
Meanwhile, Beatrice, 37, was recently seen riding at Windsor with her father and her four-year-old daughter Sienna.
“The sisters are not abandoning their father. They aren’t turning their backs on him. But everything is obviously very strained and hard,” the friend tells HELLO!.
Last week, the former Duke of York, 65, who was stripped of his titles by the King in October, finally left Royal Lodge, his 30-room home on the Windsor estate, and moved to a modest cottage on the Sandringham estate. His departure came after the release of photographs showing him inside Epstein’s mansion in New York, along with allegations from a woman who said she had been trafficked by Epstein. Andrew has always denied any wrongdoing.
© UK Press via Getty ImagesMeanwhile, sources tell HELLO! that Sarah, 66, has been lying low at an overseas spa while considering her future and where she is going to live. “She is in a bad way and feeling very guilty,” Robert says. “The last time I was in touch with her, she was worried about her mental health and mulling over the ‘what ifs’.
“The girls have been very sympathetic to her, but that might start to unravel. You have to wonder if they will ever be seen in public with her again.
Their decision to spend Christmas with the King, instead of with their parents, speaks volumes. It might be hard to rebuild what they had. It’s sad for them but the real tragedy is for the victims.”
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