Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie will likely skip the wedding of their first cousin Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling after it was revealed their father, ex-Prince Andrew, is being investigated over a suspected sex offense at Royal Ascot in 2002, I can exclusively reveal.
The two princesses have been left mortified “all over again” by the latest developments and do not want to overshadow the bride and groom’s big day, I am told.
Although it has been widely reported that the princesses would attend the wedding in recent days, a source said this was “never as concrete” as had been portrayed. The source said that while they had indeed RSVP’d to say they intended to come, and those RSVPs had not as yet been canceled, they would “never want to overshadow the bride and groom’s happy day.”
The source said that the new revelations about Andrew which emerged on Friday, with Thames Valley Police saying they had widened their inquiry into misconduct in public office to include sexual misconduct, had cast doubt on the prospect of the princesses attending either the wedding, on June 6 or Royal Ascot which runs from June 16-20.
The source said the revelation in today’s Sunday Times that Andrew was now being investigated for alleged sex misconduct while attending Royal Ascot himself in 2002, after arriving in the royal procession with his brother (below) and while his mother was also present, had effectively ended any prospect that his daughters could attend either the race meeting or the wedding.
The news that they are likely to now pull out will be a grim and Pyrrhic victory for Prince William, who considers that his father acted with undue haste to show solidarity with the princesses by inviting them to Christmas at Sandringham, and was furious at briefings that he believes emanated from his father’s office saying that the King wanted the princesses to attend Ascot.
He was particularly dismayed by his father’s decision given the fact that documents emerged after Christmas from the Epstein files showing that in one business deal Andrew proposed to the Rowland banking family that his daughters should receive “$50k each.”
Sources close to Beatrice and Eugenie told the Mail on Sunday that the princesses have no memory of the alleged $50,000 payments proposed by their father and have sought access to their historical bank records.
William has demanded the princesses submit to an “ethical audit” of their finances before he will rubber-stamp their reintegration into the family’s inner circle.
The question of whether Beatrice and Eugenie would attend Ascot had already become another fault line between Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace in recent months, producing a prolonged and undignified briefing war between the two camps.
Stories thought to have been planted by William’s camp earlier this year suggested the princesses would be excluded, only to be contradicted by a briefing that Charles had personally invited Beatrice and Eugenie to attend alongside himself and Camilla.
However the King’s plans looked to have been derailed when, at Easter, it was announced that Beatrice and Eugenie would not join the King for church. This was portrayed as being their own choice, but few doubted the decision was actually made on their behalf by the King’s office.
Prince William, I am told, has suggested in no uncertain terms that other royals should not appear in photographs with the pair for the time being. At Christmas, he went to some trouble to try and keep significant distance between himself and the princesses. The issue has become a proxy war for the many, many disagreements between the monarch and his heir, most notably Charles’ wish to reconcile with Harry.
The alleged incident at Ascot involving Andrew is said to have taken place between June 18 and 22, 2002 — when Queen Elizabeth attended the festival as part of her Golden Jubilee celebrations.
Andrew was photographed at the five-day meet arriving in a carriage with the future King Charles.
Ascot, which sits close to Andrew’s former home at Sunninghill Park, has been patronized by the royal family since Queen Anne founded it in 1711, and Andrew was a regular visitor. It was in the royal enclosure at Ascot that he had previously hosted Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell on Ladies’ Day in June 2000.
Thames Valley Police, which covers the racecourse, said this weekend it could not go into specifics of its ongoing investigation but was “following all reasonable lines of inquiry.” On Friday, assistant chief constable Oliver Wright said: “Misconduct in public office is a crime that can take different forms, making this a complex investigation,” and urged anyone with potential evidence to come forward. The force indicated that any new evidence could fall under its existing investigation or be examined as a standalone offense.
The broader Thames Valley investigation — Andrew was arrested on his 66th birthday in February and held for 11 hours before being released under investigation — was originally prompted by the release of the Epstein files by the US Department of Justice earlier this year, which appeared to suggest Andrew had passed commercially sensitive trade reports to Epstein during a stay at his New York mansion in November 2010 withing five minutes of receiving them.
Detectives have also been granted access to Scotland Yard’s files on Virginia Giuffre, who accused Andrew of assaulting her on three occasions when she was 17, and investigators are now working through a list of key witnesses including former cabinet ministers, royal officials and senior civil servants. The Met Police studied Giuffre’s allegations on no fewer than three occasions but failed to even interview Andrew before on each occasion declaring there was no case.
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Giuffre, who took her own life last year aged 41, had alleged one of the assaults took place at the London home of Maxwell. Andrew paid a $15 million settlement to Giuffre in 2022 with no admission of liability. Andrew has always denied any wrongdoing.
Sources say that last year, in what some around him saw as a last chance for the princesses, William and Catherine privately proposed that Beatrice and Eugenie submit their finances to an ethical forensic accountant, so that an independent audit could clear them of any suspicion about how they funded their lavish lifestyles as teenagers.
Royal biographer Andrew Lownie has told The Royalist he believes the sisters turned down the request, adding that the refusal “doesn’t send out very encouraging signs,” and called for a proper examination of the tax affairs of the York family.
The royal enclosure at Ascot is a village, with gossip ripping through it like wildfire. If this investigation proceeds, the King could face uncomfortable questions about just how much he knew, 25 years ago, about what his brother was getting up to at a race meeting he was also at.
A rep for the princesses has been contacted for comment.