ANDREW AND

BY RUSSELL MYERS HOLDING down a job, making time to see your friends and trying to fit in is tough at the best of times.

But it’s even tougher if you’re a princess, according to the Queen’s granddaughters Beatrice and Eugenie.

In a joint interview in Vogue magazine, the pair bemoaned criticism of their lifestyles and fashion choices, even though Beatrice took eight holidays in 15 months and Eugenie took 25 days off during the first 10 weeks of a new job.

And they boldly claimed they are the first royals having to balance careers with their personal lives.

Beatrice, 29, said: “It’s hard to navigate situations like these because there is no precedent, there is no protocol.

“We are the first. We are young women trying to build careers and have personal lives, and we’re also princesses, and doing all of this in the public eye.”

Eugenie, 28, said: “Nowadays it’s so easy to recoil when you see a perfect image on Instagram – but it’s important that it’s real. We’re real.

“We want to show people who we are as working, young, royal women, but not be afraid of putting ourselves out there.”

The sisters lived together for 10 years in an apartment at St James’s Palace, although it is understood their dad Prince Andrew meets the £20,000-a-year cost.

Eugenie recently moved into a flat in Kensington Palace with fiance Jack Brooksbank and is said to pay a “market rent” – widely thought to be nowhere near the £7000-a-month average in the exclusive area of west London.

Beatrice is the vicepresident of partnerships and strategy for Afiniti, a US-based technology company, and Eugenie is an associate director at contemporary art gallery Hauser & Wirth.

They told Vogue they were ribbed over the extravagant hats they wore to the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in 2011 and said previous mockery of their Eugenie and her fiance Jack