This week, we learned something most of us knew months ago, which is that Prince Andrew will not be evicted from Royal Lodge. Andrew has lived in Royal Lodge since the Queen Mum passed away and QEII agreed to give Andrew a sweetheart deal on the lease. Royal Lodge is a 30-room mansion with extensive grounds within the larger Royal Windsor Estate. Hilariously, Prince William wanted Royal Lodge for himself and William has been trying to get his uncle evicted for the past two years. King Charles finally gave in and announced the evictions of both Andrew and Prince Harry, and Charles planned to “give” Frogmore Cottage to Andrew. Andrew refused to budge, meanwhile the Sussexes packed their things and left Frogmore. No one knows who is living in Frogmore now. Well, now Buckingham Palace and the Duke of York are trying to put a bow on it and act like “well, it’s not like William needed another home, after all.” LOL.
There is little sign that Prince William will move into Royal Lodge, the 30-room mansion in Windsor Great Park, any time soon. And there is every sign, says Richard Eden, that Prince Andrew will continue living his home of three decades, even though his older brother, King Charles, wants to move him out – and move the Waleses in!
But writing in the latest edition of his Palace Confidential newsletter, Eden says this could be good news for William, who already lives in three homes at once, including Kensington Palace and ten-bedroom Anmer Hall.
‘In my opinion, Andrew may have done his nephew, Prince William, a favour with his stubbornness,’ he writes. ‘A friend of the Yorks tells me: “I don’t know why the King thought it would look better for William and Catherine to have Royal Lodge in addition to all their other properties than for the Duke and Duchess to remain there.”‘
The Prince and Princess of Wales had been expected to move their growing family into Royal Lodge in the coming months, after expensive renovations had been carried out. But as Eden explains, ‘when King Charles demanded earlier this year that his brother Prince Andrew move out , it was never going to end well.’
After all, the Duke of York had paid £1million for a 75-year lease on the Queen Mother’s sprawling Grade II-listed mansion in 2003 and has since spent more than £7.5million on extensive renovation work. It is also home to his ex-wife, Sarah, Duchess of York.
‘The suggestion that the pair could move into somewhere smaller on the Windsor estate, such as the home from which the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had been evicted, Frogmore Cottage, rubbed salt into their wounds,’ he writes. ‘Now, however, Andrew appears to have won his power struggle with his elder brother.’
William and Kate certainly aren’t short of homes. Currently, they live in the four-bedroom Adelaide Cottage at Windsor. They also own Apartment 1A at Kensington Palace, a 20-room property that was renovated using £4.5million of taxpayers’ money in 2013. In addition, they own Anmer Hall, a ten-bedroom country house on the Sandringham Estate.
[From The Daily Mail]
The thing I don’t want people to forget is that no one – not QEII, not Charles, not Camilla, not Andrew – no one wanted William and Kate to move to Windsor. “They” suddenly “decided” that they needed to move in 2021 because their big, fancy Kensington Palace apartment wasn’t good enough and Kate wanted to be closer to mummy. Kate wanted the kids to go to school outside of London and William used that opportunity to talk his father into setting Kate up in a separation home. Kate had such plans, she wanted a palace or a fort or some kind of estate with extensive grounds. Instead, she got a four-bedroom cottage with no space for live-in staff and a closet full of discount wigs.
So… yes, William did want Royal Lodge and yes, it would have looked bad if he had gotten it. The thing is, if they had gotten Royal Lodge, they would have “moved out” of Adelaide Cottage, right? So they would have one mansion in Windsor, one mansion in London and one mansion in Norfolk. See, they’re practically peasants! I also love how no one is talking about what is currently happening with Frogmore. The whole point of evicting the Sussexes was that it “looked bad” for such a great property to be sitting vacant for a large part of the year, right?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
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