Another royal baby arriving at the Windsor house, the first after the death of matriarch Elizabeth II last September and the accession to the throne of Charles III. Buckingham Palace announced it today, specifying that the next happy event will concern Princess Eugenie – second daughter of Andrea, younger brother of Charles and already “favorite son” of Elizabeth – who is waiting with her husband Jack Brooksbank for a second baby , after August Philip born in 2021.
For Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson it will be the third grandchild (or niece) in total, counting the little Sienna recently had by their eldest daughter Beatrice and her Italian-English husband Edoardo Mapelli-Mozzi.
The news comes days after tabloid reports that the Duke of York – cut off from any role in the royal family following his suspected involvement in the sex scandal linked to the name of the deceased American businessman and exploiter of underage girls Jeffrey Epstein – would be evaluating a problematic hypothesis of legal action in the US to try to “rehabilitate”.
The judicial action – according to the Sun already discussed with Alan Dershowitz, a famous and controversial American lawyer in turn stained by past acquaintances with Epstein – should be directed (if it is really carried forward) to try to challenge the evidence of the accusations leveled against the duke by one of the fixer’s victims, Virginia Giuffre: although in civil proceedings Andrea himself has agreed in recent months to pay Giuffre a good 16 million dollars in order to avoid a previous lawsuit. The 62-year-old prince, who has never pleaded guilty to any crime, could also try to leverage the statements against the authenticity of an old photo that portrays him with a 17-year-old Giuffre that emerged in an interview released yesterday from prison by the British heiress Ghislaine Maxwell, a former associate of Epstein and at the time a liaison between him and the American businessman.
But several royal correspondents said they were convinced that the palace and the king have every interest in preventing his brother from reopening the case, amid suspicions and embarrassments, much less while the preparations for the solemn coronation of Charles and the queen consort are defined Camilla scheduled for May in London. And they exclude that Andrea may in any case be allowed to return to official positions or military titles, if only for reasons of expediency.