King stopped funding Prince Andrew, book claims

According to an updated royal biography, the Duke of York was left in financial straits by his brother King Charles.

Prince Andrew has been under financial pressure over the costs of running his 30-room home at the Royal Lodge in Windsor.

But now royal writer Robert Hardman claims the king has decided to stop paying for security at Prince Andrew’s home or providing personal maintenance. Collectively, these costs are currently believed to amount to several million pounds per year.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the allegations contained in the book, which is published by the Daily Mail.

The statement about Prince Andrew’s income being cut comes in an updated version of the biography of King Charles written by royal author Robert Hardman.

It says the keeper of the privy purse, which oversees the royal finances, has been instructed to stop paying personal maintenance and security payments to Prince Andrew.

The BBC has already realized that the king was unwilling to subsidize Prince Andrew indefinitely – but this suggests that the final decision has already been made to cut it off.

The prince, who no longer has an official representative, has not yet responded to claims about the loss of this funding.

But that would mean he would have to find his own way of paying for the upkeep and security of the Royal Lodge, a 19th-century listed building in Windsor. It is believed that maintaining a large property leased from the Crown Estate will require high costs.

Such financial pressure on the prince comes following the release this year of two separate films, produced by Netflix and Amazon, about his 2019 BBC Newsnight interview in which he was asked about his links to US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The prince stepped down as a working member of the royal family and later lost his military titles and royal patronage and retreated into private life at the Royal Lodge. A commentator called him “deprived of royal power.”

While it is believed that it was the king who forced the funding issue, sources have previously suggested it was part of a longer-term issue that predates the king’s reign over 64-year-old Prince Andrew’s future residence and finances.

Instead of the sprawling Royal Lodge home previously occupied by the Queen Mother, the prince could move into the smaller Frogmore Cottage once occupied by Prince Harry and Meghan, as it would require far fewer upkeep and security costs. .

Frogmore Cottage can be used at the monarch’s discretion, while Royal Lodge remains a leasehold property, an independent property of the Crown Estate that can be used for other commercial purposes.

But the prince has a personal lease on the Royal Lodge that runs until 2078, and if he can pay his own way, he can stay in the house he shared with his ex-wife Sarah.

The Prince paid significant sums up front when he moved into the Royal Box, which meant lower costs for him in the long run, making him less incentivized to leave.

The house was in need of renovation and he took on the initial renovation costing over £7.5 million at the time. A lump sum payment of £2.5 million was also made as a way to buy out the year’s lease.

He also made a one-off payment of £1 million to his landlords, the Crown Estate, according to National Audit Office documents.

But there was a clause that if he left the house within 25 years of the start of the lease, he would be reimbursed for the down payment on renovations, with the amount decreasing each year.

With only four years left on that deal, he won’t be able to recoup much of the £7.5 million he spent on renovating the house, which is another incentive to stick with the lease.

But security and maintenance costs are still high, and Robert Hardman’s books say the king will no longer pay the bills.

He quotes a source as saying: “The Duke is no longer a financial burden on the King.”

Charles III: the new king. New Court. Robert Hardman’s The Inside Story will be published by Macmillan on November 7th.