Princess Eugenie's Baby Announcement Delights King Charles

0:01Princess Eugenie's baby announcement delights King Charles Meghan and Harry are reportedly running out of money and Prince William's taxes are under the microscope. I'm Jack Royston, Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent, and this is Newsweek's Royal Report. Hello listeners and welcome to the show. Now Princess Eugenie is pregnant with her third child, which is obviously wonderful news for her, and ordinarily this would be a very straightforward and simple piece on the Royal Report, probably tacked on to the end of another kind of more meaty controversial subject but there is a particular reason why the announcement itself of princess eugenie's news is interesting in terms of the wider politics of the royal family and that is because first of all it was released by buckingham palace communications office and so that means it has been released by the monarchy about a woman who's not a working royal and whose father andrew mountbatten windsor has been stripped of his royal titles and kicked out of his Windsor mansion in disgrace because of his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

1:05Now, the other reason is because Buckingham Palace have actually conveyed in their statement, in their press release, what King Charles feels about this, saying that he's delighted with the news, which I'm sure he is. And again, nothing particularly controversial about the fact of being delighted to hear you're going to have a new grandniece or nephew. But it is kind of an endorsement of both of the York girls, both the princesses, Beatrice and Eugenie, for the first time since the Epstein files. So a little bit of the recent timeline of this. Obviously, we've known for years and years and years and years that Andrew had been accused by Virginia Jeffery of sexually assaulting her in London, New York and the US Virgin Islands and that she'd sued, filed a civil case in New York which was settled in 2022.

1:54Andrew obviously denies it all. He paid an undisclosed sum while denying liability. But then in the autumn, in October, the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee in Congress in America started releasing all of these emails from the Epstein files. Andrew was then stripped of his royal titles by the king at the end of the month. and so there were some early attempts to signal that Beatrice and Eugenie were still in the fold like a new royal patronage being shared with Prince Edward and things like that so we kind of understood in that first instance that the palace weren't completely throwing Beatrice and Eugenie under the bus even as they've virtually or effectively excommunicated Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.

2:38Andrew is actually technically living on the king's estate in Sandringham, so maybe not fully excommunicado, but not far off. And then, very end of January, start of February, we got the actual release of the three million documents from the Epstein files that we've now had published, and they gave a much more detailed window into Andrew and Fergie's, both their relationships with Epstein, and also the ways in which Beatrice and Eugenie were dragged into that. So it is significant to have a new iteration or expression of the palaces and the monarchies and the kings' support for these two princesses post the Epstein files.

3:21Because actually, certain elements of the British media have been more hostile to the York girls in that time, including the Daily Mail. Rich Deed in the diary editor of the Daily Mail in particular has said he felt lied to by them. He sees them sometimes at events and so on and feels that they were not completely candid with him about how much they knew of the links to Epstein. And there are certainly things that Andrew said in his 2019 interview with BBC Newsnight and with Emily Maitlis that Beatrice and Eugenie must have known weren't true. specifically Andrew said that he effectively cut off contact with Epstein in 2006 after Epstein you know when Epstein was first being investigated on the basis of the first very first allegations fired his way and that he only saw Epstein in 2010 in order to formally break off the friendship on a kind of visit to New York now Beatrice and Eugenie were flown out to have lunch with Epstein in 2009 by Sarah Ferguson.

4:19And so therefore they must have known that that component part of Andrew's account was untrue, which obviously we now all know because we have the emails between Andrew and Epstein that continued all the way into 2011. But they knew it at a point when we didn't because they had personally sat in the room and had lunch with Epstein at a point when Andrew said he had effectively ended contact. And they didn't tell us and they didn't tell anyone really, including Richard Eden. So it is interesting you know I personally am still just about erring on the side of having sympathy for them because both their parents actually it's not just Andrew it's Fergie too must have been a complete nightmare to be brought up by and they've come out of what must have been actually a really traumatic childhood in some respects.

5:11Who knows whether they feel that way but i think that having parents as narcissistic as andrew and fergie must have an impact on the kids and they do seem to have come out kind of like relatively you know together and in control of themselves and they don't seem to have continued the terrible behavior of their parents they might have had a role in kind of not covering up but certainly not being fully candid about what their parents had done but that is also not quite the same as doing it yourself. And so if you look generation to generation, you know, Beatrice and Eugenie, it's much more stable and much less toxic and much less destructive than Andrew and Fergie.

5:50And so I kind of give them some credit for finding their own way to survive the narcissism of their parents. But let's talk a little bit about some of what has actually been said here and what it all means. So let's start with the actual palace announcements. So this statement came out Monday morning, UK time, and the Palace press release said Her Royal Highness Princess Eugenie and Mr Jack Brooksbank, that's her husband, are very pleased to announce that they are expecting their third child together due this summer. Now they have two kids already. August, age five, and Ernest, age two, are also very excited to have another sibling join the family, the statement says.

6:29His Majesty the King has been informed and is delighted with the news. So there you go, that's the line that kind of piqued my interest, really beyond obviously being happy for Eugenie that she's got a new child on the way. So I think, you know, the palace did speak on behalf of Andrew back in October. You know, they released a statement from him mid-October before he was stripped of his titles. Would they do that again now that he has been kind of, you know, forced out of his mansion and made no longer a prince and so on? I kind of think they might do under certain circumstances, but not in a kind of purely positive, happy, upbeat kind of a way.

7:05I don't think they're just going to be giving Andrew's personal news via the Buckingham Palace press office anymore. So this does signal that they're treating Eugenie and Beatrice differently to how they treat Andrew. And I find it very difficult to believe that they would speak for Fergie anymore. I just don't think that they see her. I mean, you know, Philip hated her enough when he was alive, which was before all of this came out. I don't think that there is really necessarily any way back for her. but also actually we haven't even had the baby yet so I'm probably jumping the gun a little bit here baby's due in summer within maybe like a year after the baby's born we might well expect a christening certainly the other kids were christened and so that creates an opportunity to see who gets invited and whether usually actually invites Andrew because there were stories at the tail end of last year saying that she actually was no longer on speaking terms with her father and that she was actually really quite angry with him.

8:07Then there were some kinds of off-the-record denials thrown into the British press and it's in a slightly ambiguous position right now but Beatrice had a christening for her daughter Athena in December and Andrew and Fergie did go to that and they managed to stay completely out of the line. I'm like they weren't photographed going in. We have an understanding that they were there but they were kind of smuggled in through a side door so they wouldn't be pictured. And I don't believe that the king went. In the past, you know, when there have been christenings in the family, there had also been speculation that Queen Elizabeth II would go.

8:42And no, I don't think there was actually ever any confirmation. I sense that I don't think she did, but there was this idea that as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, i.e. as the ceremonial head of the Church of England, she might have gone to the kind of church for the christening. but the christening of athena as recently as december was at saint james's palace it was at the chapel royal in saint james's palace so again you know will usually be allowed to use the chapel royal um if she wants to presumably if she does will the king attend he is now the ceremonial head of the church of england will he go i suspect he probably won't but that's the big one is will usually invite her father i mean if andrew isn't there or if fergie isn't there and that will give a really strong indication that usually actually, you know, has had to fundamentally reassess her relationship with her parents.

9:30And, you know, if she, that will be the, that will be the proof that she has cast them aside. On the other hand, maybe she hasn't, you know, there have been some denials from, you know, purporting to be from the York camp that, you know, maybe it's a bit overstated to the extent to which she's cut ties with them. So if Andrew does turn up, even if he's not photographed but if we get indication that again he's been smuggled in us by a side door we will know that actually usually is on some level at least still talking to her parents even if she's quite angry and upset with them which actually you know from my point of view i think she has every right to be um but let's talk a little bit about this whole question of what if anything um usually ought to have known or did know um and what's actually in the epstein files.

10:19So straight off the bat, for what it's worth, Princess Eugenie is not a working royal in the sense that she does not carry out royal engagements on behalf of the king. She does do some charity work. She has an anti-slavery charity, for example, and she works professionally in the private sector. But she's kind of closer to being a Prince Harry and a Meghan than she is to being a Prince William and a Kate. So she does her own stuff, but she doesn't represent the monarchy. Now, Andrew and Fergie had massive debts that Andrew was also trying to help Fergie to resolve. She owed huge amounts of money over town, up to a point in the 1990s she tried to get the Queen to help her out, and then the Queen got to the end at a point where she was through with that, gave an amount of money to Fergie and said, that's it, you're not getting any more.

11:03You are now effectively cut off. If you have further financial problems, you're on your own. I'm not going to help. And Fergie, being kind of addicted to going on these crazy spending sprees, obviously racked up huge amounts of debts and needed help. And so she wanted Epstein to kind of pay her debts and get her out of this financial pit. And 2009 came around. Epstein had already been convicted. In fact, he pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008. He had done a portion of his sentence in prison and he was now under house arrest. and Fergie threw the girls out there, went with Beatrice and Eugenie to see Epstein in person and have lunch back in 2009 and Epstein was willing to actually pay for their flights and they didn't fly cheap.

11:45They presumably were not on economy because it cost$14 ,000 according to the Epstein files to fly them out there, which is obviously a gargantuan sum of money. And there are other emails in which it appears that Epstein was trying to get Fergie to make the princesses available to him to kind of curry favour. So one email from March of 2010 reads, Sarah, could you, oh, you know, obviously the guy can't write. He says, could you are one of your daughters, presumably means could you or one of your daughters show, then there's a name that's redacted, Buckingham. Thanks. Buckingham is actually a town, a fairly unassuming town to the northwest of London.

12:26He presumably means Buckingham Palace. But the guy cannot write emails. So there we go. But some of these efforts that Epstein was making to try and rope Eugenie and Beatrice into kind of doing his bidding and showing his friends around and all of this stuff seem to have been unsuccessful. They seem to have refused or said that they weren't in Britain at the time and couldn't do it. So they may have been pushing back themselves. They may well have realized that this was all a terrible idea and not wanted to be tainted by association with Epstein. we don't really there's not nothing in the files that quite shows exactly how they felt about it except for the fact that we know that some of these efforts that epstein was making were ultimately rebuffed and fergie would come back with kind of excuses like they're skiing they're not in the country they can't do it she wouldn't say she doesn't say at any point they fundamentally disagree with my friendship with you on a moral level and are refusing but you know there is some indication that at least on some occasions it didn't actually happen which you know i i'd take careful notes of that in terms of my evaluation of the extent to which the girls are morally tarnished or tainted here because if it is actually the case that these were excuses from and that behind the scenes beatrice and usually were saying hell no like why are you why are you asking me i don't have anything to do this horrible creep which is totally possible on the strength of the evidence we have, then obviously that would reflect better on them.

13:52But let's talk then a little bit about the changing attitude to the girls in the UK media. So one of the leading people, I think, in this re-evaluation of them is Richard Eden, who is the diary editor of the Daily Mail. And he wrote a particular piece in February that caught my eye and jumped at me at the time that he wrote it. And I think I actually did a previous episode in which I talked a little bit about this. And I said, for me personally, I still come down on the side of giving Beatrice usually a bit of the benefit of the doubt. Others may disagree, but let's talk about what Eden's case is, the argument that he puts forward.

14:27So this was headlined, How Princess Beatrice betrayed me. Richard Eden's met the princesses so many times. Now, for the first time, he tells his devastating conclusion and says, I feel so guilty. So he wrote, part of the reason I'd always been sympathetic to Princess Beatrice and Eugenie was that they seemed sensible and level-headed whenever I met them at London parties. It struck me as unfair for them to be tainted by the failings of their parents, the former Duke and Duchess of York. However, the more I read of the three million documents in the Jeffrey Epstein files, the more disturbed I am by how much they knew about the late sex offender and how little they did about it.

15:04After Prince Andrew's disastrous interview at Buckingham Palace with BBC Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis in 2019, it was reported that Beatrice had advised her father to take part. Indeed, she was said to have attended a meeting at the palace with the BBC producers who persuaded Andrew to agree. So he then gives quite a detailed account of some of the other stuff being said and he rounds off the piece by saying, I fear they have betrayed my trust and betrayed the nation for allowing or even encouraging their father to lie to the nation, he continued. It is time for the sisters to speak out about what they know and order their father to start telling the truth to the police and to the authorities in the USA.

15:43So what is that a reference to? Well, let's talk a little bit about what Andrew said to Emily Maitlis back in 2019. And I think the most clear-cut bits of it is actually, so there's two dates that he gives for the timeline of how he ended his friendship with Epstein. So there is the hard cutoff, which he said he had no further contact after December 2010. We now know that's not true. but he also gives a soft cutoff date, which is 2006. Well, let me just read it and let me read what he actually said. So, well, I ceased contact with him after I was aware that he was under investigation and that was later in 2006 and I wasn't in touch with him again until 2010.

16:24So just, it was one of those things that somebody's going through that sort of thing. well, I'm terribly sorry, I can't be, see you. So basically he's just saying, you know, he partially, you know, he basically cut Epstein off in 2006, but then he went to visit him in 2010 to formally end the friendship. Well, obviously Fergie took Beatrice and Eugenie out to see Epstein in 2009. So Eugenie and Beatrice, both the princesses, will obviously have seen their father's interview on television and will have known that this wasn't true and didn't say anything to correct that record. So is it reasonable to expect that they should have done?

17:06Well, one argument for saying that they really should have done something here is the fact that Eugenie runs an anti-slavery charity. And this was a sex trafficking allegation that Andrew is trying to refute and rebut in this interview. So, yeah, I think they kind of should. The one thing that I would say in their defence is that, you know, I think when you have Andrew and Fergie as your parents, it's a matter of trying to find a way to survive the kind of constant egotism and narcissism of the people bringing you up. And so I do have a little bit of sympathy for them still on that basis. But then, you know, again, he then says he flew all the way to New York in December 2010 because he wanted to break up the friendship in person and that was the honourable thing to do.

17:50And he kind of suggests that his biggest crime was being too honourable by trying to go to New York to break it up in person. And that is just such obvious nonsense. We now know, A, that the relationship wasn't ended then and that contact between Andrew and Epstein continued after that point, continued into 2011, and that there were emails between them around the time that Virginia Jeffrey, who accused Andrew of sexually assaulting her, first went public in an interview with The Mail on Sunday, which was published in February 2011. And in the days afterwards, Andrew emailed Epstein to say, you know, oh, don't worry about me.

18:27I'm more worried about how this is affecting you. We'll just have to rise above it and we'll play some more soon. So, you know, they must have known more about that than we do. There's less in the Epstein files that definitively says that they knew that Andrew kept emailing Epstein after 2010. Maybe they would say they didn't know about those emails in 2011. Some people might believe them. Others may be more sceptical, but we don't definitively know either way. But the other question is, what really was the purpose of that trip to New York? Was it genuinely to break off the friendship? We now know that even as that visit was being planned and also in the aftermath, there were conversations about Epstein paying off Fergie's debts.

19:13and so that begs another question which is did the girls really not know did Beatrice and Eugenie really not know why it was that Fergie was chasing after Epstein and that what you know what was driving this friendship that there was a financial backdrop to this friendship and you know that was also the era in which Andrew has been accused of leaking confidential government documents to Epstein. And that allegation is what actually gave rise to him being investigated by Thames Valley police in Britain. So did the girls actually know? And in fact, will the princesses cooperate with that investigation?

19:50Do you know, would they give interviews to the police about what they knew about? That is the key element to that police investigation, which is for misconduct in a public office, not for sex trafficking or sexual assault. It's about misconduct in a public office. And will the princesses be willing to interview with the police and say what they knew specifically about the reason for the friendship, because they were there with Fergie. You know, they are material witnesses. They were there with Fergie during the 2009 lunch, after which a lot of these conversations about Epstein paying off Fergie's debts unfolded.

20:26So they really potentially, they know what Fergie said to Epstein during that lunch, which might well have been, you know, it could have been anything from my husband can get you confidential government trade documents if you pay off my debts, in which case, like, they are witness number one and witness number two in an eventual court case trying to prosecute Andrew. Or maybe they know that Fergie had a totally different motivation that we don't know about. But, like, if it was me, if I was investigating those cases, I would want to interview both of them. And we've had no real indication of whether they're going to give an interview or whether they consider themselves to have materially relevant information about their parents.

21:08Might seem like a high bar to expect somebody to testify against their own mum and dad. But, you know, we are dealing with incredibly serious issues here. We are dealing with, first of all, Epstein's crimes, sex trafficking, sexual abuse, incredibly serious. Virginia's allegations against Andrew, incredibly serious. But then also the allegations that relate to the leaking of government, confidential government documents. You know, if it happened, Andrew might deny it. He's entitled to a fair trial if he's ever charged. But that also speaks to aspects of Britain's national security, because as I've said previously on this podcast, Andrew was effectively a soft way in to kind of hacking into the British government for Epstein.

21:52and Epstein is, you know, many believe had ties to intelligence agencies and, you know, potentially Russian and Israeli and Russia, you know, Britain's virtually at war with Russia now. You know, we are effectively in the grips of a cold war with Russia. So the issues here, and, you know, I say all of this, you know, knowing full well stuff has to be proved and proved in court, but the issues that underpin these investigations on this case are extremely, extremely important. And while, you know, the part of me that wants to be really, really nice and live and let live and all the rest of it might, you know, want to want to just be nice to Beatrice and Eugenie.

22:30But there are massive high stakes issues in the background here that have to be addressed. And you can't just ignore it out of a desire to be nice to people, even when they have wonderful news to share, such as their pregnancy announcements. We still do have to remember that there are very serious issues at play here. So to round it off, Eugenie still considered in the fold by the palace at least enough that they can speak on her behalf and release to the public her pregnancy announcement. So what does that mean going forwards? Well, let's say Andrew gets charged and let's say it turns out that Beatrice and Eugenie have refused to give evidence to the police.

23:11That could leave the monarchy in a slightly sticky situation. And morally, as of this moment in time, I'm still inclined to give the princesses the benefit of the doubt. But obviously, at some point down the line, we may well need an answer on whether or not they did give an interview to the police about what took place during that lunch in 2009 with Jeffrey Epstein. And on that note, I'm going to take a quick break. But just a reminder to rate and review The Royal Report on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your favourite shows. And of course, like and subscribe on YouTube if you're watching there.

23:44Now, when I'm back, Meghan and Harry are wildly unhappy, a source told a well-known former celebrity magazine editor.

23:57Hello, listeners, and welcome back to the show. Now, Prince Harry and Meghan's spokesperson has gone on the record to clap back at a celebrity newsletter that's been published containing a whole load of source quotes talking about their lives, their diminishing finances, and it paints a really bleak picture of their prospects in the years to come, basically. Now, why on earth, I hear you ask, would an official spokesperson for the Sussexes go on the record to deny the contents of a celebrity newsletter? And I think the simple reason for that comes from the person who wrote that newsletter. And Dan Wakeford would probably be quite annoyed about the fact that I just called him a kind of ally for the Sussexes.

24:41But in reality, I needed to say something to explain exactly who he is. So he was the editor of People magazine. He was the editor of Us Weekly. And during both editorships, he was behind big PR fight back stories from either the Sussex camp themselves, Meghan and Harry's actual aides, or, you know, Megan's friends in one case. And so therefore, we kind of know that he does have contacts in the Sussex camp, that he has people who he's spoken to before, and we know that he has that. And therefore, there is going to be some interest in what he says he has found out from his contacts. Now, it is, you know, there's been a significant amount of pushback from the Sussex camp.

25:29So I'm going to start by just reading what it is they've said about it. Of course, make your own minds up. So a spokesperson for the couple told me, the unnamed source is once again doing a lot of very heavy lifting in this report. If they had any faith or evidence to back up what they allege, I don't understand why they wouldn't just go on the record with such claims. Still, I suppose it makes writing a lot easier for Mr Wakeford when you don't have an editor standing over you, asking you to evidence it or stand it up. So in other words, basically saying, you know, don't trust Dan Wakeford because now that he's left these kind of big publications, where actually, to be fair, he was the editor looking over somebody else's shoulder, keeping an eye on their work.

26:10But needless to say, despite the fact that he's left these publications, the Sussex camp is saying, you know, he's now on his own and he's a one-man band. He's capable of potentially writing anything. Don't trust him. Don't believe it. Like I said, make your own minds up. But it's just, if there's two questions here. One is whether Dan Wakeford's accounts and what his sources are telling him is reliable and accurate and true. But then there's also the other aspects of it is just the fact that they've kind of lost Dan Wakeford. So Dan Wakeford would say, in fact, he does say in his newsletter that he was never a PR cheerleader for Harry and Meghan, that he was always an unbiased journalist who was just willing to do a story presenting the accounts given to him by the people he spoke to.

27:01And no doubt, you know, I can sympathise with that. It's important to let both sides of a story speak. But needless to say, his coverage in both those magazines of Meghan was very, very positive at a time when she was really looking for a PR boost, at a time when it was risky to do what she did. So let's talk firstly about Us Weekly. She'd just been pilloried in the Hollywood Reporter, Hollywood Bible trusted within the industry where she is trying to ply her trade right now. They did a whole load of interviews with ex-staff members who said she was a dictator in high heels and kind of stomped around telling everybody what to do, reduced grown men to tears and all of these kinds of things.

27:46And so Megan's team then went to Us Weekly and went to Dan and gave him a load of stuff about what an incredible boss Megan is and how fantastic she is and how supportive she is to the other people in the company and all of these kinds of things. And actually, regular listeners to the show may remember that there was one particular line in that PR fight back that really jumped out as extraordinary to me. And it wasn't actually in the magazine. it came from Dan Wakeford himself. And so this is what Dan Wakeford said about it. He said, we're here for a reason, says one of the current team members.

28:24If you come for our boss, we're coming for you. We're just trying to do good. And I thought at the time that was completely extraordinary because it just sounds so much like bullying, you know, to say, how dare you possibly speak out against our boss? Now you've done that. We're coming for you. It just seems so threatening. And if you, it's just the worst possible way to kind of counter of bullying allegations is with threatening comments, basically. So this, interestingly, that's another interesting thing, is this story. Dan Wakeford said at the time that this Us Weekly piece ran that they'd spoken to five staff on the record.