Eugenie wedding rumour may have the ring of truth
Prince Andrew’s insistence about his daughters’ status is causing problems within the Royal Family
PRINCESS Eugenie sparked renewed speculation about her romance with nightclub manager Jack Brooksbank yesterday after stepping out wearing a ring on her engagement finger.
Prince Andrew’s younger daughter was spotted wearing a number of rings when she and her boyfriend left a private members’ club in London – including one on the third finger of her left hand.
Eugenie, who was wearing a figure-hugging black dress and teal coat, looked happy as she left Loulou’s club in Mayfair on Wednesday night.
But friends of the couple, who have been dating for six years, said the Princess was wearing an old ring that she had dropped and absent-mindedly put on her wedding finger.
Four months ago it was reported that Eugenie, 26, and Jack, 30, planned to get engaged before the end of the year and wed in 2017. The couple and their families have denied the stories, insisting they have no plans. Jack, who manages fashionable London nightclub Mahiki, has told friends he is not ready for marriage yet.
The engagement reports emerged after Palace officials began discussing plans for Eugenie to move out of the four-bedroom apartment she shares with her sister Princess Beatrice, 28, and into the three-bedroom Ivy Cottage at Kensington Palace early next year.
PIPPA Middleton and her fiance James Matthews are to marry on May 20 next year – with Prince George expected to be a page boy and Princess Charlotte a flower girl.
The Duchess of Cambridge’s 33-year-old sister will tie the knot with millionaire hedge fund manager James, 41, at St Mark’s Church in Englefield, Berkshire.
ANYONE would think that Prince Andrew had recently been rereading one particular nursery rhyme from his childhood – to wit, The Grand Old Duke Of York. For those who have forgotten it, the second verse reads: And when they were up, they were up/And when they were down, they were down/And when they were only half-way up/ They were neither up nor down.
The problem with the current Duke of York is that he is not feeling particularly grand at the moment. Andrew is terrified that his daughters, who could be considered half-way up as things stand, might well end up down.
Unless Princesses Beatrice, 28, and Eugenie, 26, marry into continental royal families or attach themselves to aristocrats their children could end up as – shock, horror! – commoners. Imagine – a plain Mr or Miss in the family! How would they get a table in a decent restaurant?
As Eugenie is widely expected to announce her engagement to boyfriend of six-and-a-half years, nightclub manager Jack Brooksbank, the matter could be described as pressing. For all his charms and public-school education Jack – the son of an accountant – has no blue blood coursing through his veins.
Andrew’s latest plan to avoid the appalling possibility of titleless grandchildren is for the Queen and her heir Prince Charles to agree that his daughters’ future husbands will be made earls. This means their eldest sons would be given a courtesy title and any subsequent boys would by styled “Honourable” and all daughters would have the title “Lady”.
This is only the latest initiative proposed by 56-year-old Andrew in what looks like an increasingly bitter dispute with his older brother over his children’s status, dating back to 2010 when his daughters were stripped of their round-the-clock police protection which was costing the public purse £500,000 a year.
The duke said that they should be treated differently from other minor royals such as Peter and Zara Phillips because – unlike their cousins – they enjoyed HRH status. Given that Zara, who had a much higher profile as an Olympic medal-winning sportswoman, had no bodyguards this was always a weak argument.
Charles’s strategy is to create a slimmed-down monarchy in a bid to stave off a rise in republican sentiment. He sees the core team as the so-called “Magnificent Seven” comprising the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, himself, Camilla, Prince William, the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry. But Andrew has always wanted his children to have more prominent roles and has renewed his efforts in recent months. Indeed, some say just as the social-climbing Princess Michael of Kent became known as Princess Pushy now it is time for that irreverent title to pass to Andrew, Prince Pushy himself.
In October, the Sunday Express revealed that the duke was campaigning for his daughters to be given taxpayer-funded roles as working royals. He also wanted them to be moved from their “small” apartments at St James’s Palace to superior accommodation at Kensington Palace. In one concession, Eugenie, who is said to be keen to start a family, has been given a cottage there which is currently undergoing renovation.
However, Charles has stood firm against Andrew’s other demands partly on cost grounds but perhaps also because he has developed a growing antipathy to his younger brother’s often irresponsible behaviour.
There was the sale of Andrew’s former marital home Sunninghill Park to a shady Kazakh billionaire for £3million more than its market price, an ill-advised friendship with US tycoon Jeffrey Epstein, who was later jailed for sex offences, and an even more foolish holiday in the company of a Libyan gun smuggler. Indeed, the scandal associated with the latter two episodes contributed to the duke stepping down as the UK’s special trade envoy in 2011. In his final year in that post he travelled 77,000 miles – the equivalent of circling the Earth more than three times – a globetrotting habit that earned him the nickname “Air Miles Andy”.
TODAY, the sixth in line to the throne describes himself on his website as “a full-time working member of the Royal Family”. But a review of his activity in the news section of thedukeofyork.org raises questions about the golf-mad prince’s productivity. His diary over the past six months has included a trip to Malaysia for seven days in June, an official visit to Huddersfield on July 11, the opening of the new gate in London’s Chinatown two weeks later, and a visit to Croydon’s Whitgift School in mid-October.
Clearly Andrew is involved in ongoing work on projects such as Pitch@Palace, an initiative to support British entrepreneurs, but few would describe him as a workaholic. Yet he does labour tirelessly to maintain his daughters’ social status. And he may well be successful – after all, his mother the Queen is apparently devoted to him and it would cost Charles nothing to hand out a couple of meaningless titles.