The royal Christmas walk to church was, for decades, one of those perfectly calibrated Windsor non-events: a bit of tweed, some staged chats with the hoi polloi, the point was continuity—not news.
Nothing happened, and that was the point.
Then, King Charles arrived on the throne.
This year, once again, Charles ensured that the walk was not just newsworthy but explosively so, by making the extraordinary decision to parade the daughters of Prince Andrew—Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie—at his side, in full public view, at precisely the moment when their father’s disgrace had once again been freshly underlined in the most toxic possible way.
Just two days ago, a tranche of newly released material connected to the Jeffrey Epstein case was released, and while none of it changed the essential facts that have been obvious for years, it did serve to re-cement Andrew’s shame.
Among the most jaw-dropping details was a note from Andrew while staying at “Balmoral summer camp” with the royal family to Epstein’s lieutenant, Ghislaine Maxwell, asking her to help him find “inappropriate new friends.”
While it is hard to think of a more disgusting encapsulation of Andrew’s catastrophic lack of judgment, one also struggles to imagine what the king thinks he is doing by showcasing two key members of what the most shameless grifting appendage ever fused onto the modern British monarchy.
I assume, based on a thousand hours of tedious briefings from the king’s aides that I am thankfully no longer subjected to, the intention was to signal forgiveness, unity, and Christian charity.
I’d argue the effect was instead to remind the country that the Windsors’ instinct, when faced with scandal, is still to close ranks and brazen it out.
I want to apologize to my readers (and a source, sorry!) for having repeated a report earlier this week in the Sun stating that Princess Beatrice would dodge the entire affair by going skiing.
My own source had told me last week that the Princesses’ appearance at the king’s pre-Christmas lunch was a test to see whether the public would accept them joining the family on Christmas Day. They told me: “It was essentially a softening up exercise for them to join Charles and William on the walk to church on Christmas Day. The newspapers haven’t made a squeak, so I guess they will be there.”
The conclusion is now unavoidable.
King Charles intends, in a move of thunderous stupidity, to make Beatrice and Eugenie central components of the public-facing royal family.
This has been obvious for some time, but their presence at the Christmas Day walk removed any remaining ambiguity.
As soon as Andrew was stripped of his title, it was announced that Beatrice would become a patron of the Outward Bound Trust, a cause close to the heart of Prince Philip. The symbolism was crude and unmistakable: Andrew himself might be beyond rescue, but his daughters were to be rehabilitated, scrubbed clean, and reinserted into royal life.
The king has made himself hostage to a dangerous assumption—that Beatrice and Eugenie are innocent bystanders, unlucky collateral damage in their parents’ downfall. That assumption is about to be severely tested.
The writer Andrew Lownie has already made clear that the updated edition of his book on the Yorks will focus far more heavily on the role played by the wider family, including the daughters, in what he bluntly describes as the Yorks’ “family business” of trading on their position. This is not ancient hn dissent. None of this suggests a sudden moral awakening or a desire to step back from the family trade in proximity and privilege.
Charles, seems to thiistory. It is a live and poisonous issue.
Beatrice was hosting a lavish event in Saudi Arabia at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh the day after her father was stripped of his titles—a hotel infamously used as a detention and torture site during Mohammed bin Salman’s crackdown onk, for some insane reason, that the danger is past. He appears determined to march down exactly the same doomed road he has traveled before: the road of misplaced conciliation, of weakness, of assuming that the deferential public can be gently coaxed into acceptance if only the palace projects enough serene confidence.
We have seen this movie already. The last Christmas of the late Queen Elizabeth’s life, Andrew did not walk to church. The first Christmas of Charles’ reign, he did. The second Christmas, Andrew and Sarah Ferguson both made the walk. It was a disaster, provoking fury and disbelief. By the following year, Andrew’s involvement with a Chinese spy meant he was sidelined again—this time at the insistence of Prince William, whose view has long been that his uncle represents an existential threat to the monarchy’s credibility.
That fundamental disagreement—William immovable, Charles indulgent—has become one of the central fault lines of the modern royal family. And yet here we are again, watching the king repeat his mistakes, this time laundering Andrew’s disgrace through his daughters. The timing could hardly be worse. Public support for the monarchy is hovering at around 51 percent, a perilously low figure for an institution that depends significantly on consent and goodwill. This is not a moment for provocative, tone-deaf displays of family loyalty.
There is also an unedifying human dimension to all this. Whatever one thinks of Andrew and Sarah Ferguson—and few think well of them—it is undeniably brutal to abandon your parents on Christmas Day, at the lowest point of their lives, in order to be seen smiling beside the king. From a purely optical standpoint, it reinforces the impression of calculation and self-interest that already clings to the York daughters. If they had chosen to spend Christmas quietly with their own parents, many people would have respected the choice. Instead, they opted—or were persuaded—to take the royal stage.
The British press, with a few honorable exceptions, has once again disgraced itself by treating this as a charming family tableau rather than the alarming political signal it actually is.
There has been barely a whisper of criticism. The same papers that dutifully published photographs of the grinning sisters arriving at Buckingham Palace for Christmas lunch last week will decline to ask the obvious questions. Why are these women still receiving royal perks? Why do they occupy grace-and-favor properties in London? Why, in a cost-of-living crisis, are taxpayers underwriting the lifestyles of individuals from a hugely corrupt branch of the royal family whose only qualification is birth?
The anger is real, and it is growing. Charles seems oblivious to it, cocooned by courtiers and editors who mistake deference for loyalty. To parade Andrew’s daughters days after fresh revelations linking him once again to Epstein, Maxwell, and other unspeakable figures such as Peter Nygard is not an act of kindness. It is a catastrophic misreading of the national mood.
The monarchy is fragile in a way it has not been for generations. It cannot afford self-inflicted wounds of this magnitude. The simplest, smartest course would have been for Beatrice and Eugenie to stay away, quietly, without drama. Instead, on Christmas Day, the king chose to force the issue, to test the public’s tolerance at exactly the wrong moment.
It is a huge mistake. And if Charles persists with this strategy of rehabilitation-by-proximity, he may yet discover that the goodwill he assumes he can draw upon has already been spent.
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