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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are now officially out of royal circulation, and so—with the royal family suddenly down by two of its younger and better-looking members—speculation is growing that the Firm could be seeking to recruit Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, daughters of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.
Robert Lacey, the royal historian and writer who consults for The Crown, is one of many to see the loss of Harry and Meghan as a natural opportunity for the young “blood princesses,” telling Hello! magazine he believed the royals would be well advised to simply replace the two outgoing members with the young women.
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The uncomfortable fact is that Beatrice and Eugenie have been pretty well entirely excluded from official royal duties for all of their adult life.
Prior to the Diamond Jubilee in 2012, they were given occasional duties, but after their father was excluded from key moments with the family in the first iteration of the Epstein scandal, they were stripped of police protection and told they would not receive state funding and needed to find careers.
“Beatrice and Eugenie are willing to serve, and have made that abundantly clear on many previous occasions,” a friend of the York girls tells The Daily Beast. “But they both went out and got jobs like they were told to, and have built up their own lives outside the royal universe. It’s clear they really enjoy the freedom they now have to do what they like without being scrutinized.
“After what Meghan and Harry went through, I can’t think they would sign up to become full-time working royals, even if that was on offer, but they do have a very strong sense of duty and history, particularly Beatrice.”
While there is little doubt that the girls, who are ninth and 10th in line to the throne and receive no public funding, would step up to the plate if called, there remain formidable barriers to their re-entry, not least that they are related to Prince Andrew, whose elder brother, the king-in-waiting Prince Charles, would rather never be reminded of again.
Indeed, the dramas of this week—featuring Prince Andrew and American law enforcement at loggerheads over his availability (or not) for interview about Jeffrey Epstein—show no signs of abating.
Insiders acknowledge that for Beatrice and Eugenie to embark once againon official royal duties, even part-time, would require Prince Charles to chow down on some huge mouthfuls of humble pie, as it is he who masterminded the Yorks’ exclusion from the inner circle.
One thing that might be thought to militate in their favor, their popularity with the Queen, who often has the girls for tea, cuts no ice with Charles; and Her Majesty has a strict policy of allowing Charles to take all the big decisions in the family these days.
However, the friend of the sisters who spoke to The Daily Beast said, “If they were asked to pitch in, they would be delighted and honored. If they could help their grandmother, who they worship, they would do so like a shot.
“And really what other choice do the royals have? Those ribbons ain’t going to cut themselves.”
Indeed, if the royal family, who have to be “seen to be believed” as the Queen sometimes jokes, wishes to maintain a public visibility rate of around 3,500 engagements per annum, they are going to need some fresh warm bodies.
Prince Charles and his sister Anne do about 500 engagements a year each, but she is 69 and he is 71.
Even if Edward upped his game from 300 to 500, and William and Kate shifted from a frankly slovenly combined total of 340 to closer than 500, they are still a long way short, especially as the Queen’s elderly cousins—the Kents and the Gloucesters who do a lot of unglamorous charity work—are steadily shuffling off the stage. It would seem unreasonable to expect the Queen to continue to do the 200-plus meet and greets she did in 2019 into 2020 and beyond.
However, the unfortunate reality for Beatrice and Eugenie’s cheerleaders is that Charles knows full well that a natural consequence of a slimmed-down monarchy is a slimmed-down book of engagements. That the family needed to go on a diet is incontrovertible, as is the fact that it may have lost weight faster than he or anyone else expected in the last few months. But in the long run, the body regal is rather healthy.
The enforced pruning may have done it no harm. By the time Charles dies, it is likely George, Louis and Charlotte will all be venturing into public life.
Reducing the number of public appearances from 3,500 to say, 1,500, is probably something Charles can live with easier than having the blasted Yorks back on the balcony, even if this more thinly-spread approach to royalty means that even the most favored organizations only get royal support for a few years rather than for the life of their patron as they used to.
Royal biographer Penny Junor told The Daily Beast: “They have been looking at a different way of doing things for some time now, so Harry and Meghan’s departure may not actually change things that much.
“My guess is that Beatrice and Eugenie won’t be called upon. I don’t think they have got a very good public profile, they often seemed to be enjoying holidays too much, and they haven’t been prepared for the role in the way William and Harry were.
“Sophie Wessex has kept her head down, and been most discrete and hard working, in an off-the-radar way. She will do more, I am sure.
“They want people who will stay out of trouble. Beatrice and Eugenie have attracted some bad publicity over the years and the royal family really do not need that. These are tricky times. There is no guarantee the monarchy is safe. The whole idea of having fewer people was that you have better, you can control them, and if the price to pay for that is generally doing less, I think it’s a price Charles can accept.”
Lady Colin Campbell, the royal biographer and society hostess who was a confidante of Princess Diana and first revealed her eating disorders, said that the lack of staffing options that the departure of Harry and Meghan had landed the palace with was always entirely predictable.
“I have been warning, ever since Charles first started to develop this hare-brained scheme of a slimmed down monarchy, that if one of the principals were to depart it would cause great problems,” she said, “And here we are. The problem is that anyone who has ever been involved in any charity will tell you that it is extremely difficult to raise money without a royal figurehead.
“Beatrice and Eugenie are both very nice young women, and whenever they have been given a duty they have discharged it perfectly. It can only be hoped that Prince Charles will now use this opportunity to bring them into the fold, and abandon this ridiculous scheme of becoming a European-style monarchy that only allows the direct line of succession to participate.”
