In 2024, King Charles hosted his biggest ever family Christmas at Sandringham – but this year’s guest list will be a little sparser thanks to the controversy surrounding his younger brother.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson have been told they are not welcome at the celebrations after a drip-feed of revelations about their involvement with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
It will be the second year running that the King’s brother and his ex-wife have not attended. Last year, they pulled out of the celebrations just 10 days before Christmas after Andrew’s links to alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo, came to light.
The former couple will spend one last Christmas hunkered down at the Royal Lodge, which they will vacate at some point next year, while their two daughters are left in an awkward situation.
Feeling ‘torn between loyalty to the King and her parents’, Princess Beatrice has reportedly decided to spend the festive season overseas on a skiing trip with her husband, children and friends.
Princess Eugenie, 35, is facing a similar dilemma and could also avoid her parents over Christmas, but it is not yet clear if she will take the King up on his invitation to join the rest of the family at Sandringham.
Both princesses attended the Royal Family’s early Christmas party at Buckingham Palace last week without their parents.
Meanwhile, despite Charles’ fragile truce with his son Prince Harry – the pair had tea together at Clarence House in September – there is no question of the King’s estranged son and his family joining the Royals for Christmas.
Even without the Sussexes and the York sisters, the guest list has swelled in recent years after the late Queen Elizabeth relaxed the rule that meant that family members’ partners could only attend once they were married.
As sources claim that King Charles, 76, wants to keep the Duke and Duchess of York, both 65, at arm’s length after Fergie ‘wrote to Epstein to apologise for publicly disowning the vile billionaire’, some seats at the table may be left empty
In 2006, she relaxed this rule and extended an invitation to Prince William’s then-girlfriend Kate Middleton – who politely declined and insisted on abiding by tradition until a proposal was forthcoming.
Over the past 10 years, however, unmarried couples have attended such as Samuel Chatto – son of Princess Margaret’s daughter Lady Sarah – who brought his girlfriend Eleanor Ekserdjian in 2024.
Peter Phillips’ fiancée Harriet Sperling is expected to be a new addition to the festivities this year also.
What’s more, Queen Camilla has invited members of her side of the family to attend – further boosting the numbers.
All this means that even without Eugenie and her family, there could be 39 people around the dinner table. So, who is likely to be at the King’s three-day Christmas celebration?
Sarah also failed to make an appearance last year, after in 2022 joining celebrations for the first time since 1992 (though not for the church walkabout); after Andrew’s links to an alleged Chinese spy came to light. In 2023 however, she joined other royals on their Christmas Day church visit, too
22 core members of the Royal Family expected to attend
The King and Queen will of course be joined by the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, 10, and Prince Louis, seven.
The hope of catching a glimpse of the youngsters on the walk to church is a major draw for wellwishers who gather every year.
It’s expected that the King’s other brother Prince Edward will attend with his wife Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, son James Viscount Severn, 17, and daughter Lady Louise, 22.
Meanwhile Princess Anne’s family account for quite a few spaces around the table: her husband Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence; daughter Zara and son-in-law Mike Tindall with their three children Mia, 11, Lena, seven, and Lucas, four; and son Peter Phillips with his two daughters Savannah and Isla.
Earlier this year, Peter announced with engagement to girlfriend Harriet Sperling.
Now the rule that only married couples can attend has been relaxed, it’s very likely that she will be asked by King Charles to join the family.
She has already met the King and Queen and members of the wider family at events such as Royal Ascot.
Question mark over Princess Eugenie and her family
Princess Beatrice attended last year’s gathering with her husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, her stepson Christopher Woolf, nine, and daughter Sienna, four.
This year, there is a new addition to the family in the form of eight-month-old Athena, but she will not be spending her first Christmas with her Royal relatives, after Beatrice decided to holiday with friends to avoid an awkwardness.
Her sister Princess Eugenie is also still welcome, along with her husband Jack Brooksbank and their children August, four, and Ernest, two.
Last year, she spent Christmas at her second home in Portugal and now must decide between accepting the King’s hospitality and showing supporting her beleaguered parents who are set to spend a final Christmas at Royal Lodge before moving out.
Andrew was stripped of all his royal titles in October after a leaked email published by the Mail on Sunday proved he lied in his interview with BBC’s Newsnight when he claimed he ‘never had any contact’ with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein after they were pictured together in New York in December 2010.
The Mail also revealed a gushing email that his ex-wife Sarah sent Epstein just weeks after publicly disowning him in which she called him a ‘steadfast, generous and supreme friend’.
Andrew, 65, has since faced further embarrassment after new images of him emerged as part of the Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice.
One image shows the former prince lying across the knees of five women in one of the Royal Family’s most treasured rooms at the Sandringham Estate, smiling with his face near the bare legs of one.
Behind him stands Epstein’s grinning pimp Ghislaine Maxwell, alongside another unidentified woman who has had a black box put over her face by the US Department of Justice.
Despite there being no context to the newly released picture, it raises fresh questions over what the disgraced royal knew about Epstein and the billionaire paedophile’s sex-trafficking girlfriend as he brought them into the Royal Family’s inner sanctum.
Queen Camilla’s 9 family members
The Queen’s son Tom Parker Bowles, 50, may well join his mother at Sandringham again, alongside his daughter Lola, 17, and son Freddy, 15, after making his first appearance last year.
At the time, Camilla was recovering from a bout of pneumonia, while her husband had been diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer earlier that year.
Describing his mother as a ‘resilient woman’, he told the Daily Telegraph: ‘My mum said, “I’d love you to come, I haven’t had Christmas with you for a long time.”‘
He added: ‘The older you get, the more conscious you become of mortality, especially with illnesses and the rest of it.’
His sister Laura Lopes, her husband Harry, and their children Eliza, 15, and 14-year-old twins Gus and Louis, are also expected to be invited, as well as Camilla’s sister Annabel Elliot.
She is one of the Queen’s close personal aides – a group that was known as Ladies-in-Waiting but Camila has renamed the Queen’s Companions.
The 8 representatives of Princess Margaret’s family
Family of the late Queen’s only sister, Princess Margaret, are stalwarts of the Royal Christmas celebrations.
While members of the extended family are invited to a Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace prior to December 25th, there is always a seat at the table for King Charles’ two first cousins and their families.
Artist Lady Sarah Chatto and her husband Daniel, and their children Arthur, 26, and Samuel, 29, are expected to be there. It is possible that, much like last year, Samuel will attend with his girlfriend, Eleanor Ekserdjian.
They will be joined by Lady Sarah’s brother David Armstong-Jones, 2nd Earl of Snowdon, and his children Lady Margarita, 23, and Charles, 26.
No invites sent to Montecito
Amid rows over security, not to mention a feud with the Royal Family, it is unlikely that Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and their two children Archie, six, and Lilibet, four, will attend.
However, there appears to been a slight thaw in relations since their last visit to Sandringham in 2018.
In September, the Duke, 41, reunited with his father King Charles for the first time in 18 months for a face-to-face meeting in London that lasted just under an hour – amid a four-day trip to the UK.
In an apparent olive branch, he later said the ‘focus really has to be on my dad’ in the next year.
This was tempered with a declaration that his ‘conscience is clear’ after a series of tell-all interviews and his memoir Spare.
During a sit-down interview with The Guardian in Kyiv, where he had stopped off after a ‘pseudo royal tour’ in Britain, he said: ‘I know that [speaking out] annoys some people and it goes against the narrative.
‘The book? It was a series of corrections to stories already out there. One point of view had been put out and it needed to be corrected.’
He added: ‘I don’t believe that I aired my dirty laundry in public. It was a difficult message, but I did it in the best way possible. My conscience is clear.
‘It is not about revenge, it is about accountability.’
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