Camilla Jessen
Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie join royals at Palace Christmas lunch as Prince Andrew remains absent.
Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie reunited with senior royals for King Charles’ annual Christmas lunch. A gathering their father, the former Prince Andrew, was not invited to.
Sisters attend together
The sisters were photographed arriving at Buckingham Palace on 16 December, with Princess Beatrice driving and Princess Eugenie seated beside her wearing festive candy-cane earrings.
Another image showed Eugenie travelling separately with her husband, Jack Brooksbank, while one of their sons appeared in the back seat.
They joined a wide group of family members, including the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children, as well as the Duchess of Edinburgh, Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent and Lady Sarah Chatto.
A long-standing royal tradition
The Christmas lunch remains a private family event, continued by King Charles after the late Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
The monarch has hosted it at both Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle in recent years, ahead of the family’s Christmas celebrations at Sandringham.
The sisters’ appearance comes shortly after the 12 December christening of Beatrice’s youngest daughter, Athena.
Their parents, Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, attended the ceremony but were not photographed.
Andrew remains out of view
Andrew, 65, has kept a low profile since King Charles removed his royal titles in October amid renewed scrutiny of his links to the late Jeffrey Epstein.
The move followed years of fallout from Andrew’s 2019 BBC Newsnight interview and subsequent legal developments.
He has consistently denied wrongdoing. After a U.S. judge allowed Virginia Giuffre’s civil case to proceed, Queen Elizabeth stripped him of his military patronages in early 2022. Andrew later settled the lawsuit out of court for an undisclosed sum. Giuffre died earlier this year at age 41.
On the day of the Christmas lunch, Andrew was photographed riding on horseback in rainy Windsor Park.
Sources: PEOPLE; BBC Newsnight.
