As Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson face mounting pressure from King Charles to vacate their shared home, Royal Lodge, the Duchess of York is indicating she has no intention of moving into her London townhouse.
According to the Daily Mail, the royal has no intention of moving into her £4.25 million London townhouse. Instead, she has reportedly rented out the property for an eye-raising £16,000 a month.
On Sunday, Sept. 20, the publication revealed that the Duchess of York "has installed tenants in the two-bedroom Belgravia property she bought in 2022—and the rent she is receiving from this means relocating to London from Windsor isn’t part of her ‘game plan.'"
According to recent reports, King Charles is pressuring his brother Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Ferguson to move out of their shared Royal Lodge home. According to The Times, Prince Andrew's security detail at Royal Lodge is estimated to cost King Charles close to $4 million a year—a cost the monarch is said to be paying personally since 2022, when his younger brother lost his police protection after being forced to step back from his official royal duties.
Next month, Prince Andrew will reportedly lose that security detail. According to the latest reporting, King Charles has yet to line up any replacement security detail, calling into question just where Prince Andrew will take residence or if he will have to start fitting the bill for his personal protection himself.
For the uninitiated, Prince Andrew lost his police protection after the late Queen Elizabeth stripped the royal of his military titles and patronages, following damning allegations and a civil lawsuit from Virginia Guiffre, who claimed the Duke of York sexually assaulted her when she was a minor.
The royal has denied those claims and the lawsuit was settled out of court.
Royal expert Angela Mollard argues that Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson should vacate Royal Lodge and move to the much more modest Frogmore Cottage—if not for their sake than for the sake of their children.
"The 65-year-old Duke will never restore his reputation—he's old, soiled, damaged goods and no amount of charitable work or outings at church with more upright members of the family are going to change that," Mollard wrote in her most recent column for the Daily Mail.
"But Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie are young women with royal-adjacent lives ahead of them," she continued. "For their sake, and in honor of their hard work and discretion, their father needs to do the right thing and hightail it to Frogmore Cottage pronto."
