Instagram post raises Princess Beatrice marriage fears

Because we can’t have nice things in 2026, Princess Beatrice’s great love story has reportedly hit an iceberg with a new report claiming that friends “fear her marriage is in trouble”.

Have there been warning signs for a while now?

Remember back in February, in the wake of the release of the Epstein files, when every day delivered some fresh revelation about the truly loathsome Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor? The monarchy; rocked. His daughters: Gone to ground. The police: Closing in.

On February 6, The Royalist’s Tom Sykes reported about the degree to which Beatrice was “struggling”.

“She can’t eat, she can’t sleep. She is so stressed out,” a friend of Bea’s told Sykes.

The 37-year-old had “cut off contact with all but a few close friends and only leaves the house if she has to”, Sykes reported.

So what better moment for her husband, dreamboat property developer and designer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi to fly more than 7,000km to Palm Beach, Florida where he Instagrammed his sun-dappled trip away like a man whose greatest concern was unsightly rumples in his salmon suit?

In his defence, he was there for a work conference and someone has to keep the lights on and the Philip Treacy bills paid. However, this is not exactly the sort of behaviour that has onlookers humming Stand by Your Man.

As that friend had told Sykes, Edo is “doing his best to support her. But he has to keep going.”

However, this Florida trip was not a one off and only weeks later, in early March he was back in the US again, this time heading to Florida’s exclusive Fisher Island where he posted photos of a construction site and incredible blue water.

Another possible Instagram clue – on UK Mother’s Day in March, Edoardo failed to post about Beatrice, the mother of his two daughters.

So, is he a devoted business chappie ploughing his furrow through a crisis because someone has to or is something grimmer going on?

This week the Daily Mail’s highly connected Charlotte Griffiths reported that a series of sources have raised the alarm about Bea and Edo’s marriage of nearly six years.

“Things haven’t been great for a while between them, but Beatrice has been determined to soldier on and forge a path through,” a source told the Mail. “She wants to stay together, but he seems more and more distracted by work and travel. Just when she needs him most, he’s been pulling away.”

Someone else who knows the couple has said: “There’s been distance between them with his much-increased work travel lately, which he has been posting out [on social media] heavily in a way he didn’t before.”

On Edo’s “distant behaviour”, the Mail reports another source having said it ‘feels all-too plausible.’

“Sadly, those rumours sound credible, they said. ‘It would make sense when you look at how much he’s travelling now. He’s posting about it constantly in a way he never did before.

“Beatrice knows what he’s like. He’s Italian.”

According to the Mail, his highly successful firm is part of the reason for his alleged distance, with another source saying, “He’s really worried his in-laws will affect his business … He’s all about himself at the moment. You have to feel for Beatrice.”

Meanwhile, ever since Andrew was de-princed, de-wormed and defrocked last year, his eldest daughter “has been quietly trying to weather this storm”. Bea is reportedly “desperate to hold things together’ but with her husband but two children under four, a stepson, a business, and her father’s new and close relationship with the police has seen him bumped down the priority list.

“He needs attention, he’s one of those men,” a well-placed source told the Mail. “Beatrice feels very raw and beside herself on so many levels.”

Last Friday the couple, who will mark their sixth wedding anniversary later this year, were seen at a dinner at a Notting Hill sushi restaurant putting on a “united front”, per The Mail.

The Royalist’s Tom Sykes has said that two separate sources have told him that last weekend Bea and Edo were at a party “telling everybody they were absolutely fine but looking like perhaps they weren’t totally fine.”

However, a friend of the couple has told Hello!:“Things are great between them and the only distance between them recently has been physical distance because of work!”

“The only thing Bea and Edo are navigating are their busy jobs and looking after their children! They’ve both had recent stints working abroad and like so many working parents, have balancing work with looking after the kids.”

Let us lovers of love hope and pray this is right because until now, Bea and Edo have been one of more cockle-warming royal love stories. Until the lovelorn princess reconnected with old friend Edo, reportedly at sister Princess Eugenie’s wedding in 2018, her romantic track record was enough to make a gal start enquiring about nunneries.

In 2005, aged 17, Beatrice met her first boyfriend American Paolo Liuzzo but their relationship was not made public until the following year the most York way possible – when he accompanied her and her parents to their Switzerland to down a few pistes. However the press immediately cottoned onto the fact that he had been charged with manslaughter while at university after the death of a teenager during a drunken fight. (The charge was later reduced to assault and he was given a suspended sentence.)

Unfortunately this 2006 ski trip broke his probation and resulted in it being extended.

Queen Elizabeth was reportedly so concerned she called a “secret summit” and ordered Beatrice to end things.

(In 2024 Liuzzo, who had a history of drug and gambling addictions, died of a suspected overdose in Florida.)

The same year, 2007, Prince William played matchmaker, introducing her to businessman Dave Clarke, with the couple staying together for ten years. After all that time, weight was bearing down on Clarke to bend ze knee.

“People felt that there was a lot of pressure on Dave to marry her,” The Royalist’s Sykes has said. “He just didn’t want to want to buy into the whole royal lifestyle.”

Their split in 2016 left the princess “very heartbroken”.

Nine months after their break-up, Clarke became engaged to American Lynn Anderson in 2017. In July 2018 they married her in a lavish ceremony at an Italian resort, which cost $248,000-a-day with then Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Ashton Kutcher in attendance.

Finally, cupid seemed ready to pluck his bow in October 2018 when Eugenie wed Jack Brooksbank, the first tequila ambassador to marry into the royal family. Edo was an old family friend, reportedly and it was there that he and Bea danced the Nutbush (I’m assuming) that the coup de foudre struck.

However, Edo was not a scandal-free choice either, having only weeks before, ended a three-year relationship with architect Dara Huang, with whom he had a two-year-old son, Wolfie.

Still, for Beatrice, after getting together with Edo, it looked like they had both been chucking back Puck’s potion, becoming engaged in 2019 then marrying in 2020 during the pandemic. Queen Elizabeth seemed to firmly approve, not only lending her granddaughter the Queen Mary diamond fringe tiara she had chosen for her own wedding but also a famed Norman Hartnell gown of hers to wear. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/royal-family/article/disgraced-prince-andrew-airbrushed-out-of-beatrice-wedding-photos-txljmlwlw

Bea and Edo’s first child, Sienna, arrived in 2021 and second daughter Athena in 2025.

Given this bumpy backstory, it makes this week’s reports about trouble in Bea-Edo paradise that much sadder.

Still, there is one further bit of Insta-evidence that should give us hope. His Instagram bio sill starts with one simple word: “Husband”.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.