With just six weeks to go until Christmas, a royal guessing game has begun and two princesses are at the centre of it.
There are already reports that Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie are planning to spend the festive season with the Royal Family at Sandringham despite both their parents not expecting invitations to The King’s Norfolk home this Christmas.
The two princesses were regulars at the royal celebrations at Sandringham until last year. In 2024, both announced they would be spending Christmas with their husband’s families and not at the estate where King Charles gathers his relations, following the tradition beloved by his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
However, as controversy swirled around their father, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, last autumn after questions were raised over his links with a suspected Chinese spy, he said he would stay away from the royal Christmas at Sandringham and Beatrice and Eugenie made other festive plans.
In the end, Princess Beatrice did head to Norfolk for the season after doctors advised her not to travel – she was in the later stages of her pregnancy with her daughter, Athena Mapelli Mozzi, who was born at the start of 2025.
Princess Eugenie wasn’t there, spending the holidays elsewhere with her husband, Jack Brooksbank, and their two sons, August and Ernest.
However, this year it’s already thought the two princesses will join the Royal Family at Sandringham. In recent days, royal author Robert Hardman, has told the Daily Mail that King Charles is concerned that the ”sins of the father” don’t have a negative impact on Beatrice and Eugenie.
In the paper, Robert Hardman said ”they are blameless, they have led a pretty upright life and are level-headed and very nice young women.”
It’s led to speculation about where they will spend Christmas with reports now indicting that they will choose the royal gathering this December.
It’s expected that Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, who was formally stripped of his HRH and Prince last week when The King issued Letters Patent, could spend Christmas at Royal Lodge. He is set to leave the thirty room residence on the Windsor estate in early 2026 after surrendering his lease after further controversy when it was revealed he didn’t pay a monetary rent on the property that he has lived in since 2003.
Beatrice and Eugenie’s mother, Sarah Ferguson, lives at Royal Lodge with Andrew Mountbatten Windsor but is understood to be making her own living arrangements as they leave the property.
Buckingham Palace announced at the end of October that The King had begun the process of removing the HRH and Prince and taking away Andrew’s title of Duke of York.
The King later instructed the Lord Chancellor to remove the title of Duke of York from the Roll of the Peerage.
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor has faced a number of fresh claims about his friendship with convicted paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, in recent months. The posthumous memoir of Virginia Giuffre also claimed she was forced to have sex with Andrew three times when she was just 17. He denies that.
Andrew had originally said he would no longer use his title of Duke of York but there was more anger when it became clear he would still retain it. King Charles moved swiftly to remove the title for good and the second son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip has now lost that and the other two titles he received on his wedding day, Earl of Inverness and Baron Killyleagh.
Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie’s titles aren’t affected by the decision. They are both HRH and Princess because of the Letters Patent issued in 1917 by their great, great grandfather, King George V. Those state that all grandchildren of a Monarch in the male line (ie the children of a Monarch’s son) are entitled to use HRH and Prince or Princess.
