Do you think Prince Andrew should be made to leave Royal Lodge?

[Houseplanter]

Another (trashy) article in the press today saying Andrew needs to downsize out of Royal Lodge and make way for Wills & co.

Apparently he doesn't have the fund for its upkeep, it's falling in to disrepair.

W & C obviously could make better use of it.

He's been there 30 years so I can understand he doesn't want to move out of essentially his family home. My own view is he should be in deepest darkest nowhere, but wondered what others thought.

Is there any reason at all to leave him be?

She was trafficked which means that at the age of 17 she was underage.

Apparently he had legal bills to pay after the Epstein scandal. He had to sell his vernier chalet and was being sued for $6m by a French socialite in relation to a debt on the chalet. I imagine Mummy paid those debts as he was broke. Or possibly too hard nosed to expect to pay for anything himself.

www.tatler.com/article/prince-andrew-sarah-duchess-of-york-sued-67-million-swiss-ski-chalet

I imagine supporting your wayward, entitled brother to live in a grandeur beyond his means is not something Charles wants to do indefinitely. And he likely wants to solve the problem before William is king. His daughters can see the writing on the wall - they bought Fergie a £5m house in Belgravia in prep for them moving out of Royal Lodge but Andrew seems stubborn.

Presumably Andrew has no money or wants to keep it to bequeath to his daughters for their futures. He wants to milk Charles for as much as possible. Charles wants to give him less money and for him to live like a single non working royal in a smaller place. He can stop funding him and the Royal Lodge maintenance then won't get done which is a condition of the lease. But will Charles take legal action to get the property back? In my opinion reality has now dawned on Andrew but is just holding out till the price is right. For £5m, £10m, £20m he will downsize to Frogmore Cottage.

To answer your question. The Times article says Charles paid his £3 million annual security bill and pays him an allowance of around £1 million per year. So basically Charles is funding him and pays for staff. If Charles refused to pay I doubt he could afford to stay there.

It's all rather awkward and I suppose for the children of the Queen difficult because at the end of the day he is their brother. The stupid man doesn't seem to grasp that gracefully moving to a smaller property and resisting matching around at the head of the family whenever he gets the opportunity (as at the memorial service recently) would help him in the long term. He won't get an official role back but at least he'd seem less arrogant and entitled. I doubt William will cut him any slack in the future.

So Andrew gets £4 million a year, plus a mansion on a peppercorn rent. Bloody hell.

I can understand how impossible(?) it must feel to downsize from a mansion to a cottage.

I suppose when all your siblings, nieces, nephews & daughters all live in mansions it must feel galling/ humiliating to move into a much smaller property. And God knows what it must feel like to be told to leave your home of 20 years for your nephew & his family (who have, what, 2 other homes? 3?)...that's pretty brutal as far as family relations go!

The bulk of the wealth passes monarch to monarch as that is exempt from inheritance tax. So the second son starts life being financed by his parent the monarch. On their death he is financed by his sibling the monarch and then, if he outlives the sibling, he is financed by his nephew the monarch. As long as you toe the line of course - you can be kept in style or just given the bare minimum.

I think the issue of never having their own money and seeing a time when they would need to be financed by their nephew King George was a reason that Harry and Meghan decided to leave and monetise the hell out of their titles.

The article in the Times suggested that KC pays £2m pa for static security at RL plus a further £1m for mobile security that travels with him plus £1m+ for living expenses. KC wants him to move to Frogmore Cottage - which was considered good enough for Megan and Harry - as this is within the Windsor security cordon so would save KC the £2m pa in static security costs. Article also says that W&K do not want to move from Adelaide Cottage. (I suspect that that is mainly K wanting the children to live as "normal" a life as possible in their circumstances so a 30 room mansion is probably not on her wish list). As KC has also said he wants to halve the funds the RF draw from the Crown Estate from 25% to 12% so more can be spent on good causes, saving £2m pa and perhaps being able to cut Andrew's allowance a bit as Frogmore is smaller so less upkeep is probably some way up his wish list.

The article also suggested that KC is more concerned about not upsetting Sarah and the princesses than Andrew in particular as the girls see happy to undertake some limited royal duties without drawing from the civil list.

@Choux of course, there's no reason why Andrew couldn't have planned for this day and - dare I say- saved a nest egg? He was certainly being given enough millions by friends and sycophants for years!

@londonmummy1966 Thanks, I'd only read that it was intended for William & kate to move into the lodge.

Very interesting, thanks for posting this.

@Houseplanter I dont know why the queen allowed that kind of lease! after all, she had already given him a home but he sold it and pocketed the money!! he should not be allowed to live in such a vast house as royal lodge and let it fall into serious disrepair. there is only him and his ex wife living there! to be honest, I cannot understand why the queen allowed sarah to live there either after she behave somewhat disgracefully many years ago!! as long as charles carries through with things and does not allow harry to come strolling back! how does andrew manage to afford his horses and his staff because I doubt that he would do much cleaning or cooking?

how does andrew manage to afford his horses and his staff because I doubt that he would do much cleaning or cooking?

He gets 1 million per year (plus all his security expenses) from Charles and pays £250 a week in rent.

I can only imagine the late Queen saw this coming. More fool her though.

Andrew could easily have saved face and decided himself to move to another property on the Windsor site, which would keep him within the security. A sensible, reasonable person would make it about him and just moved. Instead he's underlined his reputation as entitled, arrogant and self centred.

Frogmore is hardly a cottage.. to the rest of us it's a mansion! Newly re furnished too.

He's a fool

@allthemiddlechildrenoftheworld Sarah was given a roof over her head for the sake of her daughters who were young and needed stability. And also to prevent Sarah from needing so much money.

She like Andrew had no financial acumen and had already been working commercially as a Weight Watchers spokesperson in the US and as I recall was caught in a cash for access scandal. She needed to be quietly funded to keep her from behaving disgracefully to fund herself.

Isn't his son in-law sorting repairs?

Frogmore has 4 bedrooms, that doesn't make it a mansion by any standards. Have noticed recently the populist press have started to use 'mansion' to mean 'good size family home' instead of excessively large, grand houses.

Frogmore House could be classed as a mansion but that's not Frogmore Cottage.

I suspect the £1m is not accurate. How would he maintain the property and pay all the staff, bills, cars, horses, stabling etc on £1m?

I’ve just googled and it has “4 bedrooms and a nursery”. And it actually started out with 10 bedrooms and only went down to 4/5 after the recent refurbishments. It does have an two orangeries and a yoga studio though for those that are worried.

Because she had a gigantic blind spot over him that clouded her judgment.

Remember in 2016 when Prince Andrew was reported to police for allegedly ramming the gates of Windsor Great Park with his £80k Range Rover (provided to royals for free) so he could avoid a one-mile detour? Police took no further action. Entitled git!

Oh so maybe a borderline mansion then! 😄

There’s probably not enough space in the average Frogmore bedroom to house Andrew’s vast teddy collection.

Frogmore cottage certainly looks larger than your average family 4 bed. If it used to have 10 beds and now only has 4/5 I imagine the bedrooms it has are all generous sized with en-suites and some have walk in closets.

That's interesting as the photo I've seen makes Frogmore look quite small. Perhaps it's side on and there's other wings.

I think he should fuck off to the castle of Mey and never be seen again

He's a fucking paedo

THere's an aerial shot of Frogmore Cottage in this article - not your typical little country cottage (I think it was originally built for Queen CHarlotte as her Petit Trianon) Frogmore Cottage: Harry and Meghan 'requested to vacate' property - BBC News