Two weekends ago, the Times of London published yet another article about how King Charles really wants to evict Prince Andrew from Royal Lodge. RL is the massive mansion on the Royal Windsor complex/estate, and Andrew is twenty years into a 75-year lease. While I’m sure Charles could finagle a way to evict Andrew, it would be a more involved process and Andrew would have no qualms about suing the Crown Estate. So Charles’s new thing is that he might withdraw all of Andrew’s funding from the Duchy of Lancaster, including the security costs which Charles picks up. Andrew still refuses, claiming that he’ll leave the Royal Lodge lease to his daughters in his will. So… for two years, we’ve been asking: why the urgency for trying to get Andrew out of Royal Lodge? Why is Charles acting as if that’s the most important royal property? We’ve heard this whole time that Prince William is desperate to move his family into RL. But what if Camilla has her eye on it? That’s the theory the Mail’s Richard Eden has spun:
What was missing from the [recent Times] report, however, was any sense of why the King is apparently so keen to evict his brother from his home of two decades. Money can hardly be a motivation, given His Majesty’s great wealth. The article suggested that Royal Lodge, which is owned by the independent Crown Estate, could be let to a private tenant instead.
Yet a National Audit Office report of 2005 made it clear this could not happen, ‘because of the sensitive location of the property in the centre of the Windsor Great Park with its consequential management considerations, and because of security concerns surrounding the Royal Family’s access to the Royal Chapel’. The Royal Chapel of All Saints – where Andrew’s daughter Princess Beatrice married Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi in 2020 – sits in the grounds of Royal Lodge.
The Crown Estate, meanwhile, took the view that it would be appropriate were the property to remain under the occupancy of the Royal Family. According to my sources, that position hasn’t changed.
There has been some suggestion, it is true, that the Prince and Princess of Wales and their three children could move into 30-room Royal Lodge. The Waleses currently live in four-bedroom Adelaide Cottage at Windsor. However, a source close to William and Catherine tells me they are very happy there and have no wish to leave. In due course, they will occupy Windsor Castle.
‘The last thing William and Catherine would want is a load of controversy about their getting another big house,’ says a friend. ‘They already have their large home at Kensington Palace and their Norfolk property, Anmer Hall, in addition to Adelaide Cottage. There was a fair bit of criticism of the cost of renovations to their Kensington Palace home and they would not want to go through all that again.’
What, then, is the real reason behind the King’s determination to evict Andrew and Fergie, who – like Charles and the Princess of Wales – has been through a recent cancer battle? More than one friend of the Yorks has suggested the same intriguing answer to me: could it be that the King sees Royal Lodge as a potential future home for Queen Camilla?
Like anyone who has been seriously ill, the King is said to have been thinking about every possible contingency. Who wouldn’t? He will know that, were his wife to outlive him, she would be left with a somewhat uncertain status. As dowager Queen, Camilla would be stepmother – not mother – to King William. And William will inherit everything, just as Charles did from his mother, including Clarence House, where Charles and Camilla live when they are in London. As Prince of Wales, William already owns the King’s beloved Gloucestershire home, Highgrove. So, Charles will be determined to make sure that Camilla is kept in the manner to which she has become accustomed. Might that include guaranteeing her a ‘country’ bolthole in Windsor Great Park?
My first thought was: Prince William is playing a very dangerous game, trying to throw Camilla under the bus as “the reason” why Andrew should be evicted from RL. It’s especially stupid because: A) no one really believes that William, Kate and the children all live in Adelaide Cottage; B) no one believes that William and Kate would be content to spend the school year in such a small home lacking in prestige; and C) when this whole “evict Andrew” thing started, everyone said that William was the one demanding RL for himself. Now Huevo the Master Manipulator (lol) is saying no, no, the king wants the lodge for CAMILLA!
Let’s play along for a second though – it would not surprise me if Charles and Camilla were both thinking about the endgame and what William might do to his widowed stepmother, the dowager queen. But even if Charles wanted to put Camilla in RL right now to protect her, Charles has given a blueprint to “King William” so that William can evict family members from any royal property. It would be much better for Charles to quietly buy Camilla some private real estate “just in case.” She already owns Ray Mill free and clear. Plus, I doubt she would want to be involved in any way with King Huevo’s reign of terror.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.