Beatrice to have low-key wedding in wake of Duke’s Epstein troubles
Camilla Tominey
Victoria Ward
PRINCESS BEATRICE’S wedding will be “very low key” in light of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, say sources, after Buckingham Palace announced it would be held in a tiny royal chapel.
The Duke of York is expected to walk his daughter down the aisle at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, to marry Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, her Italian fiancé, on Friday May 29.
Yet the choice of such a small venue for the ceremony, which will be followed by a private reception hosted by the Queen in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, suggests that the royals want to make the event as private as possible. A source close to the York family insisted that it was “always going to be a low-key affair” adding: “Bea never wanted it to be a big event.”
Her sister, Princess Eugenie, married Jack Brooksbank in October 2018 at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, which has a capacity of 800, and the wedding featured a star-studded guest list, as well as a carriage procession.
The Chapel Royal seats a modest 150 – and any reception at the palace will be closed to the public as it is impossible to see into the gardens. The couple will travel by car, rather than carriage, but it is not yet clear how guests will be transported between the venues, amid concerns that the Duke’s presence will overshadow the big day. The controversy surrounding his friendship with the paedophile financier shows no sign of abating, with the FBI accusing him of failing to respond to repeated requests for an interview and a row over whether Union flags should be flown to mark his impending 60th birthday.
Beatrice, 31, is said to have been forced to repeatedly delay the announcement about her nuptials. Mr Mapelli Mozzi, a property developer, had been engaged to Dara Huang, an architect with whom he has a young son. They separated in 2018.
Well-wishers have been asked to forego gifts and instead find out more about the work of Big Change, founded by Beatrice and six friends to transform education, and Cricket Builds Hope, a British-rwandan charity using cricket as a tool for social change that was cofounded by her husband-to-be.
Last night, Palace sources stressed that there was never any intention to televise the wedding, despite three million viewers tuning into ITV to see Eugenie’s nuptials. Instead, it is likely that “pooled” footage of the couple entering and leaving church will be shared among broadcasters. The Queen is said to feel sorry for the York sisters, to whom she is close. Her offer to hold the reception at the Palace was deemed a clear show of support.
At 1am listeners to Radio 4 will leave their cocoa cooling and stand to attention as the station broadcasts the national anthem. Or they will take no notice. The police do not interfere either way.
It’s the same with flying the flag. The Government says it will not fly the Union Jack on the Duke of York’s birthday on February 19. This is an eccentric decision, since on March 10 government officials will be eagerly jumping the halyards at 8am to fly the Union Jack for the birthday of the Earl of Wessex. (Yes, I know that jacks are flown at sea; but there is a higher theology, or vexillology, which acknowledges that for more than a century the Admiralty and Parliament have officially called the national flag the Union Jack.)
We fly the flag on the birthdays of the Queen’s children not to cheer them up and assure them of our personal admiration, but for the same reason that our national anthem is formally a prayer for a person – God save the Queen. It is not the dutiful and lovable lady for whom we sing, but for her as Queen. “May she defend our laws / And ever give us cause / To sing with heart and voice / God save the Queen.” That implies that if she didn’t give us cause we wouldn’t. Fortunately, she will, and so shall we.
Naturally, we’d all die for the flag, just as soldiers do for their colours. Yet the British take flags in a robust, easygoing way, not blenching at the Union Jack displayed on dog bowls or Ginger Spice’s outfit. In America, which theoretically separates Church from state, the flag is sacralised and its mistreatment is tantamount to blasphemy.
British law on flying flags is gratifyingly uncodified. The man in charge is the Earl Marshal, who happens to be the Duke of Norfolk. He has preternatural powers over who flies what when, and even possesses a little courtroom at the College of Arms from which he can send you to prison or worse. But the fact is that anyone can fly the Union Jack at any time.
The list of flag-flying days from the College of Arms only indicates when the UK flag flies from government buildings. But it may also be flown from those buildings all year round, which leaves us in the anomalous position on Wednesday week (Prince Andrew’s birthday) of that day being the only one in the year when the flag might not be flown on some buildings. It looks a little mean.
There is also a small civil war, civilly conducted, between the College of Arms and the Flag Institute, which likes to register flags. It has on its books a flag for every county but Leicestershire. The next county day is March 5, when the Cornish will fly the alarming flag of St Piran, black as anarchy but redeemed by a white cross. In Parliament Square, when the men with megaphones and the crusties have gone home, they fly all 50 county flags each July 23 (Historic County Flags Day). They do look brave in the sunny breeze. follow Christopher Howse on Twitter @beardyhowse; read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion