King Charles may be reduced to plundering Prince Andrew’s rental home, the latter having refused to obey his older brother’s orders to vacate the Royal Lodge.
“The Royal Collection, which owns quite a lot of the treasures inside there, may say, ‘Well, we can’t be confident that this place is safe anymore,’“ Robert Hardman, a biographer of the king, said on the Palace Confidential podcast, according to the New York Post. “They’ll start taking the paintings and some of the furniture away.”
Which is to say, this process hasn’t started yet, but given Andrew’s obstinance about moving out of the Royal Lodge—the mansion where he holds a 75-year lease—it’s not too hard to imagine it as the natural next step for the brothers. They’ve been feuding over this for months.
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Charles reportedly wants to reserve the lodge as a dowager home for Camilla, but needs to oust Andrew first. Due to the disgraced duke’s perennially shambolic finances, Charles has questioned Andrew’s ability to pay for necessary maintenance and refurbishments—particularly after Charles cut his £1 million allowance and his security funding.
In a humiliating coup, however, Andrew secured financial backing from a mystery benefactor. Some sources have claimed that he managed to renegotiate rates he can afford on his own, but either way, he appears to have found a way to pay his way.
As Hardman noted, however, the Royal Lodge is intended as a home for working royals, which Andrew no longer is: His late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, stripped him of his titles over his association with Jeffrey Epstein and the rape allegations it produced.
Given that Andrew currently has “no public life, no prospect of a public life,” Hardman said, “I think that does bring into question what he’s still doing in a place that was a home for many years of a sovereign.”
That question doesn’t seem to be bothering Andrew much, but maybe it will once Charles starts taking off with the chairs.
