The King of England has allowed his brother, Prince Andrew, to stay at his Windsor mansion, Royal Lodge, after a bitter dispute over the location. Located in Windsor Great Park, just 5.1 kilometers south of Windsor Castle, in exchange for being able to stay, the Duke of York will have to pay for its renovation, according to British media reports. Prince Andrew occupied this privileged residence in 2004, along with his two daughters, Beatrice and Eugenia of York. It was after the Crown Estate, the collection of lands and properties belonging to the British monarchy, granted it a 75-year lease in 2003. This contract also required Prince Andrew to take charge of a series of renovations amounting to 7.5 million pounds (about 8.6 million euros at the current exchange rate) and which he took care of before the move. In 2008, Sarah Ferguson, his ex-wife, also moved into the residence, which had previously been occupied by the Queen Mother, mother of Elizabeth II, until the day of her death.
All those agreements of 2003 happened under the supervision of Elizabeth II, for whom Prince Andrew was always her favorite son. However, many things have changed since those years: in 2015, Virginia Giuffre, a victim of millionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, accused the Duke of York of having sexually abused her when she was a minor. Although Andrés and Giuffe reached an out-of-court agreement to settle the lawsuit in February 2022, following the scandal, the prince was removed by the queen from his public representation duties in 2019 and stripped of his military titles and royal patronages. In 2022, after the death of Elizabeth II and the coronation of Charles III, the Duke of York became the great problem inherited by the new king, refusing to leave the public scene.
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Charles III was more forceful than Elizabeth II when it came to his relationship with Andrew. Elizabeth II was accused, on more than one occasion, of acting more like a mother than a queen in her son’s affairs: not only was she, literally, his support on solemn occasions, such as when he entered Westminster Abbey in the funeral held a year after the death of Philip of Edinburgh, but in England it is unknown exactly what financial aid was provided to the Duke of York to pay the 14 million euros that the extrajudicial agreement with Virginia Giuffre cost. Charles III, however, did not hesitate to urgently approve (and as soon as he came to the throne) the Law of State Counselors, by which he incorporated his brothers Princess Anne and Prince Edward to the list of members of the royal family. who could replace him in his public duties in the event of illness or travel abroad, practically eliminating the possibility that Andrés could replace him. Both the Duke of York’s room and office were eliminated in the latest renovations of Buckingham Palace, making it clear that he no longer had a place there. And perhaps the last way to ensure that the infamous prince did not appear in the photograph was, without a doubt, to ask him to leave Royal Lodge.
An image of the Royal Lodge estate, in Windsor, taken in 1937. The Print Collector / Getty Images
In March of this same year, the decision of the King of England to ask his other big problem, his son Enrique, and his wife, Meghan Markle, to permanently vacate Frogmore Cottage, the place where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex decided to make their life as members of the British royal family, a more discreet and smaller refuge than Kensington Palace, before leaving for the United States. The reason for this decision, as The Telegraph reported at the time, was to encourage Prince Andrew to go live there. Since last April, the Duke of York stopped receiving his annual allowance of 249,000 pounds (282,370 euros at the current exchange rate), which made him unable, in theory, to maintain his current residence in Windsor. Hence Charles wanted to move his brother to Frogmore Cottage.
Things did not go entirely well: this summer Andrés undertook a series of renovations at Royal Lodge, at a cost of around 200,000 pounds (231,007 euros) and, according to several media reports, the prince had insisted on barricading himself in the house while he They carried out the works, for fear of being evicted and not being able to re-enter. However, he has just been granted a “stay of execution”, in exchange for him investing what the mansion needs, an outlay of around 2 million pounds (2.31 million euros), according to the Mirror.
The issue is that this decision may not be exclusively in the hands of the sovereign, according to reports The Times: An associate of Andrés had previously told the publication that, despite everything, his permanence at the Royal Lodge was fairly assured because his name is on the lease contract with the Crown Estate. “This is a lease between him and the Crown Estate. That is not the king’s business. It is a matter for the Minister of Finance. The only way to get him to move would be through a deal that he would have to accept,” the source reported. It seems that Elizabeth II left the matter tied up.
2023-10-05 00:26:46
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