Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie have been left “aghast” and “deeply embarrassed” by the latest tranche of material released in the US justice department’s Epstein files, which has dragged their parents back into the public glare and revived painful questions about judgment at the heart of the former Duke and Duchess of York’s circle.
According to reports in the Daily Mail, sources close to the sisters say they were unprepared for the tone and content of emails attributed to their mother, Sarah, Duchess of York, in which she is said to have expressed effusive warmth towards Jeffrey Epstein years after his conviction for child sex offences. The correspondence, which has circulated widely in the British press, has compounded the distress caused by newly released photographs of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor with a woman lying on the floor – images that, while unexplained, have again placed the disgraced former prince under scrutiny.
Friends of the sisters say the disclosures have been acutely personal. Beatrice and Eugenie, both of whom have sought to build adult lives at a careful distance from their father’s downfall, are said to be particularly upset by claims that they were mentioned in emails exchanged between their mother and Epstein, including references to their private lives and to a lunch with him when they were teenagers.
Sarah Ferguson has long acknowledged that Epstein helped her financially during a period of severe money troubles, a relationship that has previously attracted criticism. What has shocked observers this time is the apparent intimacy of the language attributed to her in messages sent after Epstein’s 2008 conviction, and the suggestion that the association continued well beyond the point at which many would have severed contact.
For Beatrice and Eugenie, the sense of exposure is compounded by the renewed focus on their father. Andrew’s friendship with Epstein has already cost him his public role, his military titles and his standing within the royal family. The appearance of further images and documents has reopened a chapter the sisters had hoped was closed.
“Whatever their parents did or didn’t do, the girls are now old enough to feel the full force of the embarrassment,” said one source familiar with their thinking. “They are trying to live responsible, private lives, and this drags them straight back into something they had no control over.”
The fallout has not been confined to the York household. According to people close to the royal family, there was an awareness at senior levels that further damaging material was likely to emerge, helping to explain the hardening of attitudes towards Andrew and Sarah in recent months. Decisions that once appeared severe now look, to some, like an attempt to draw a firm line.
No suggestion of wrongdoing has been made against Beatrice or Eugenie, and neither has commented publicly. Yet the episode underlines a recurring truth about royal scandal: its consequences are rarely limited to those directly responsible.
