A new report is making the rounds this week, and if you\u2019ve been following the Andrew-Epstein fallout, it probably won\u2019t surprise you\u2026but it <\/span>should<\/em> give you pause before you take it at face value.<\/span><\/p>\n According to a source <\/span>speaking to the <\/a>Daily Mail<\/a><\/em>,<\/a> Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie have been told they cannot attend Royal Ascot this June: \u201cI’ve spoken to my friend who works at Ascot, and they said the girls have been told they can’t be there this year. Beatrice has taken it the hardest. She’s been completely blindsided by all of this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a> The <\/span>Mail on Sunday<\/em> goes further, \u201cunderstanding\u201d that this is \u201cpart of a wider decision to exclude the Princesses from all public-facing events for the foreseeable future.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Buckingham Palace declined to comment. Royal Ascot declined to comment. Beatrice and Eugenie have not responded. And <\/span>PEOPLE notes that<\/a> decisions around royal attendance at Ascot, including the carriage procession list, rest solely with Buckingham Palace.<\/span><\/p>\n So we\u2019re left with one anonymous source, a written chain of \u201cunderstands,\u201d and a wall of \u201cno-comments.\u201d Let\u2019s think this through. <\/p>\n Before we accept the \u201cBeatrice and Eugenie BANNED\u201d framing, it helps to understand how Royal Ascot actually works. The geography of the event tells a more complicated story. <\/p>\n <\/a> Royal Ascot is open to the public, with several levels of <\/span>experiences<\/a> available. High profile attendees can be expected to appear, broadly, in three tiers of presence: <\/span>the Royal Enclosure<\/strong> (technically \u201cpay-to-enter,\u201d but membership requires sponsorship from two existing members and approval from His Majesty\u2019s Representative), <\/span>the Royal Box<\/strong> (invitation-only, reserved for children and grandchildren of the monarch and their close associates), and <\/span>the Carriage Procession<\/strong> (the famous daily parade down the track that all attending royals are typically slotted into).<\/span><\/p>\n Now, Beatrice and Eugenie are grandchildren of the late Queen Elizabeth II. They are King Charles\u2019s nieces. The idea that they could be \u201cbanned\u201d from the Royal Enclosure or the Royal Box strains credulity. These are spaces the family has discretion over, yes, but barring the King\u2019s own nieces entirely would be an extraordinary and visible act of exclusion. It would, frankly, be a harsh statement. <\/p>\n What is more plausible, and more in keeping with how this family operates, is that they might be attend, but be quietly left off the Carriage Procession list. A conspicuous absence from the carriages <\/span>would<\/em> be noticed by anyone paying attention, but it wouldn\u2019t require an explicit \u201cban.\u201d It could just be… an omission.<\/span><\/p>\n And then there\u2019s another possible scenario still: what a source familiar with the event described to me as the girls having \u201coverlapping engagements.\u201d <\/span>Scheduling conflicts, in other words.<\/strong> The <\/span>royal<\/em> way of not showing up, without ever being seen to be told not to show up. It would be far more in keeping with King Charles\u2019s style to give his nieces a graceful off-ramp than to issue any kind of formal exclusion.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a> But here\u2019s what I think is the more interesting story:<\/strong> how this claim fits in with the contradictory signals the palace has been sending about Beatrice and Eugenie\u2019s standing for the better part of a year. Because when you lay it all out, the picture is genuinely muddled.<\/span><\/p>\n May 2025:<\/strong> Both sisters are very much present on the royal social calendar. Eugenie attends a Buckingham Palace garden party, a tradition stretching back to the Victorian era as a way for the royals to engage with people from all walks of life. The day before, both she and Beatrice are at the Chelsea Flower Show, a spring staple that King Charles endorses personally as Patron of the Royal Horticultural Society. This is not the itinerary of women being sidelined, even as their parents\u2019 ties to Epstein are widely understood even at this point in time.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/a> September 2025:<\/strong> The temperature changes. An apologetic email that Sarah Ferguson wrote to Jeffrey Epstein back in 2011 is revealed, and within days, sources \u201cclose to The King\u201d are briefing that Andrew and Fergie will not be welcome at Sandringham for Christmas. Suddenly, Beatrice and Eugenie face what is described as an \u201cawkward choice\u201d: spend the holiday with their parents at Windsor, or leave them behind and join the wider family for frosty walks and camera lenses at Sandringham. Royal author Phil Dampier remarks to <\/span>The Daily Mail<\/em> that Prince William \u201cdoes have a good relationship with his cousins\u201d and wouldn\u2019t want them punished for their parents\u2019 mistakes. That framing\u2014 cousins who need protecting from collateral damage\u2014tells you something about where they stood at that moment.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n October 2025:<\/strong> Andrew relinquishes his titles on October 17th, and the consensus crystallizes quickly: Beatrice and Eugenie\u2019s titles will be untouched, their positions wholly unaffected. They are not full-time working royals, but they <\/span>are<\/em> princesses of the blood. They attend major royal events, they show up at Christmas. This, we are told, will not change.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Share The Fascinator<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n But then comes the doubling down (the King announces that Andrew will be <\/span>stripped <\/em>of his titles) and some counter-briefing. On <\/span>October 30th<\/strong>, journalist Emily Maitlis claims on a podcast that William put pressure on his cousins\u2014allegedly warning them that their own titles could be reviewed unless they pushed their father to give up his residency at Royal Lodge. <\/span>PEOPLE<\/em> was one outlet that pushed back directly and specifically: no such meeting took place, and in any case, stripping Beatrice and Eugenie of their titles would require an Act of Parliament, which is not within William\u2019s power to threaten unilaterally. The palace denied it. But the fact that the tip was circulating at all (and that cameras and a BBC helicopter were already on scene at Royal Lodge that night, suggesting something had been expected to happen) might be its own kind of signal. Something was in motion, even if Maitlis\u2019s specific claim about the sisters didn\u2019t hold.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n November 7, 2025: <\/strong>Princess Beatrice <\/span>makes an appearance<\/a> as the new Deputy Patron of <\/span>Outward Bound<\/a>, a U.K.-based charity that helps children of all backgrounds grow through exposure to nature and outdoor adventures. Her uncle, Prince Edward, appeared alongside her as the new Royal Patron of the nonprofit, sparking conversation about an institutional show of support for the York sisters so soon after their father\u2019s fall from grace. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/a> December 5, 2025:<\/strong> The sisters are absent from Kate\u2019s annual Christmas carol service, an event they\u2019ve attended in prior years. The explanation given is that they were invited in early autumn, but had other commitments. (<\/span>Scheduling conflict.<\/em> There\u2019s that phrase again.)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n December 16, 2025:<\/strong> Beatrice and Eugenie publicly attend the royals\u2019 Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace\u2026but without their parents. Andrew was photographed riding a horse in Windsor Park, 22 miles away, on the same day.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n December 25, 2025:<\/strong> The sisters, to everyone\u2019s surprise, join the Sandringham church walk. Their father (now known simply as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, stripped of his HRH) and mother are kept away entirely. Beatrice and Eugenie\u2019s decision to make the walk is explicitly characterized as a visible show of alignment with\u2014and from\u2014the wider royal family.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/a> Reading the pattern, what emerges is less a coherent strategy or desire to ostracize the York sisters, and more the <\/span>push-and-pull of a family navigating an unprecedented situation in real time.<\/strong> The palace has been sending mixed signals about Beatrice and Eugenie for months, sometimes including them, sometimes explaining away their absences, sometimes floating trial balloons (like the Maitlis story) that get quickly batted down.<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s a version of this story where King Charles is the architect of his nieces\u2019 gradual exclusion. <\/span>And there\u2019s another version where Charles keeps trying to protect them, and it\u2019s actually Prince William who keeps pushing back.<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n Share<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n The Daily Beast\u2019s<\/em> <\/span>Tom Sykes argues<\/a> it\u2019s the latter. According to Sykes, who often quotes \u201cfriends of Prince William\u201d in his writing, the Prince of Wales has long urged his father to cut the York family completely out of royal life and has despaired at what he saw as Charles\u2019s half-measures on Andrew and Fergie. Now that the King has finally acted decisively against Andrew, William\u2019s concern (again, per Sykes\u2019 sources) is that Charles is repeating the same pattern with the daughters: too soft, too slow, too unwilling to make the clean break.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a> There <\/span>is<\/em> evidence for Charles\u2019s protective instinct toward Beatrice and Eugenie specifically. The clearest example was Princess Beatrice being appointed Deputy Patron of the Outward Bound Trust, a charity with deep associations with the late Prince Philip, just days after her father\u2019s titles were removed. The timing was notable. It read like a pointed message: whatever happens to Andrew, the king\u2019s nieces are <\/span>not<\/em> being written off.<\/span><\/p>\n So with Ascot\u2014often framed as a marker of who is \u201cin\u201d royal favor and who is \u201cout\u201d\u2014the question of who made the hypothetical call for Beatrice and Eugenie\u2019s exclusion matters enormously. <\/span>Is this Charles reluctantly conceding ground to William\u2019s pressure? Or William acting unilaterally in ways the palace then has to manage?<\/strong> The briefing wars of the past year suggest it may be both, at different moments.<\/span><\/p>\n What <\/span>has <\/em>shifted since last autumn is the bureaucratic backdrop. The latest tranche of Epstein files paints a picture of Beatrice and Eugenie as more materially and <\/span>socially entwined with Epstein than had been previously understood<\/a>\u2014crucially, as adults, not children. <\/span>The sisters have long been able to position themselves as peripheral, as young women caught up in something they didn\u2019t understand. But that defense becomes harder to sustain as the public record of their connections and financial dealings fills in around them.<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Royal](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!HfNO!,w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F805595fd-f038-4490-a253-5249ab1a39f5_1080x1080.jpeg "\\"Royal")
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