The Royals with Roya and Kate - Andrew Epstein And The Royal Story Of 2025

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

2025 tested the Royal Family like few years before it. As Andrew’s long-running crisis reached its decisive moment, the monarchy also faced illness at the top, family fractures and global diplomacy. In this end-of-year special, Roya Nikkhah and Kate Mansey look back on a year that reshaped the Crown forever.Presenters: Roya Nikkhah, royal editor for The Sunday Times, and Kate Mansey, royal editor of The TimesContributors: Andrew Lownie; George Greenwood, investigations reporter at The Times; Kaya Burgess, religious affairs correspondent at The Times; Aubrey Allegretti, chief political correspondent for The Times; Max Foster, anchor and correspondent at CNN; Mark Landler, London bureau chief at The New York Times; Chiara Brown, commissioning editor at The Times LuxxProducer: Robert WallaceEditor: Stephen TitheringtonImage: Getty ImagesClips: Extracts from 'The Reluctant Traveller', an Apple Original series, courtesy of Apple TV Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to the Royne-Times from The Times and the Sunday Times with me, Royne Ecar, and me Kate Mansy. Today, we're taking a look back on a year that has reshaped the royal family. 2025 might be best described as a year of change. We saw the King navigating cancer treatment in full public view. The careful and considered return of Catherine, the Princess of Wales to Royal Duties. And the future king, William, Prince of Wales. stepping further into his role as air. There was also the continuing saga of the Sussexes, Harry and Megan,

from high-profile interviews to tentative steps towards reconciliation with the king. And from across the Atlantic came President Donald Trump, bringing with him one of the most elaborate state visits in modern memory. But there is one story that had more impact than any other, not just in this year, but also. arguably in the modern history of the monarchy, the extraordinary downfall of the former Prince Andrew, now simply Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.

Week after week bought revelations, investigations, and calls for the king to act. And act he did, stripping Andrew of his titles, his residence at Royal Lodge, and issuing a palace statement in which the king and queen made clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been and will remain with the very, victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.

So today, as we close out 2025, we're looking back on a year shaped by personal challenges, constitutional pressures and one truly seismic moment. And we'll be asking what all this tells us about the state of the royal family as we enter 2026. What a palace insider termed the Andrew problem has been front page news this year, but it's actually a story that started decades ago with an ill-judged friendship between the then-Prince Andrew and the financier Geoffrey Epstein, a friendship which persisted after Epstein was convicted of sex trafficking and after allegations emerged from one of Epstein's victims, Virginia Dufre, that she had been forced to have sex with Andrew on three separate occasions,

allegations he has always denied. This was a story that refused to fade. In fact, 2025 bought three significant publications that intensified scrutiny rather than closing it down. There was nobody's child. The memoir by Virginia Joufrey published posthumously just months after her death by suicide. It's a stark, uncompromising account of a life shaped by sexual exploitation and of the lasting damage caused by Epstein. There was the Times on Tuesday, October 21st, when we revealed that Andrew had not paid rent on his home at Royal Lodge for two decades, occupying the Crown Estate property under a so-called pepper corn arrangement, after an upfront payment of around £8.5 million for maintenance and repairs. These revelations sparked an inquiry from the Public Accounts Committee, which we expect to begin next year. That investigation was led by our colleagues Tom Witherow, George Greenwood and Emmanuel Medullo.

We'll hear from George later. But before all that, the prelude was in August with the release of Andrew Launey's unauthorised biography of Andrew and his former wife, Sarah Ferguson. It was called Entitled, The Rise and Fall of the House of York, a book that pulled together years of reporting, financial detail and unanswered questions about the former prince, including his time, travel. travelling around the world for 10 years as the UK's special representative for trade and investment. Camilla Long wrote in the Sunday Times, this isn't just a book. It's a case for revolution. And Andrew Launey spoke to me just as entitled landed on the shelves and just as pressure on the palace was beginning to ramp up. The book implies that Andrew's fall from grace was not only his own fault, but it was enabled by royal silence and institutional protection. you're calling for more investigations into Andrew

and his behaviour. Do you think there should be more scrutiny on the system? There needs to be greater Royal transparency and accountability and Sunday Times and Channel 4 have done their investigations into the finances. And I welcome that. I hope there's more of it. We need to have more parliamentary accountability.

We have to have parliamentarians able to ask questions. We have to get rid of this exemption in the Freedom Information Act that gives the Royals basically this excuse not to have any scrutiny whatsoever. There were attempts 20 years ago by the MPs to set up a royal register. I think there needs to be a royal register. If Fergie can sit in the royal box, you can basically tell us all the companies that she's involved with.

And I think we need a parliamentary investigation and interviewing these ambassadors who've kept about these activities, about actually really what was happening in some of these countries. Because I think in terms of his position, as a public figure, in a public position, doing things for private gain, I think there are grounds there for an investigation. And as a final thought, is there the one thing that stands out that during the course of your research really blew you away, the most sort of flabbergasted thing? Well, I mean, the fact that when things were reported to the Queen, either the courtiers told the people, and one of the reports came from someone in MI6, said, look, there's no point. She's not going to do anything. And the fact that Andrew was allowed to run dinners in Buckingham Palace.

So you think her affection for her second son clouded the late Queen's judgments, is what you're saying? Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm afraid. It pains me to say it because we all had respect for her. But this was her Achilles heel. And ultimately she did, you know, she did take all his time. Yeah, but only when she'd been finally forced to do it. I mean, he should have gone long before. He should never have the job in the first place. And those complaints in 2001 should have been the end of the matter.

I suppose it's a case of I told you so from King Charles. Well, I mean, I hope he will now grip it. And I speak as a monarchist that, you know, the monarchy only operates with the trust of the people. And once that trust is broken, then they're in trouble. And they really need to not just bandage it on the side. They need to actually show that they are open to some sort of scrutiny. You know, get away from this managing the narrative. Andrew Launey was making a broader point there

that the problem facing the palace wasn't only Andrew's association with Geoffrey Epstein but what that association exposed. A system where it was increasingly difficult to understand who knew what, what things cost, who paid for them and where accountability actually lay. And all of that brings us to October

and one extraordinary week in which several strands of this story came together. First, details from Virginia Dufre's posthumous memoir nobody's child, began circulating widely, even before its former publication. Its contents, including the claim that Andrew felt, sex with me was his birthright, reignited public anger and sharpened scrutiny. Then came the palace response. Andrew issued a statement through Buckingham Palace, announcing that he had agreed to place his titles of Duke of York and Knight of the Garter into abeyance, though at that stage he still remained a prince.

And then came further revelations about his financial arrangements, including the so-called peppercorn rent he paid to live at Royal Dodge and Windsor. And all of this unfolded in the very same week that the king was undertaking one of the most symbolically significant acts of his reign, travelling to the Vatican and becoming the first British monarch to pray with the Pope in more than four centuries. That contrast lay at the heart of the Andrew problem. On the one hand, we had an institution projecting moral authority and historic continuity,

but on the other, a scandal threatening to overwhelm it. So I spoke to the Times as religious affairs correspondent, Kaya Burgess, an investigations reporter George Greenwood, to discuss what this moment really meant. This has become now, it's not just a sort of private problem for the palace, is it, and the king? it has become an issue for Parliament as well. We've seen Parliament drawn into it. He voluntarily relinquishes titles for now.

But that has just sort of led to clamours and calls members of the public from some MPs, that that's not enough, that there should be a formal act of parliament, there should be some sort of legislation to strip him with the titles. And we now have various MPs putting forward private members bills.

We had Keir Starmour on Wednesday in the House saying he would support an inquiry into more information on the Crown Estate and the lease and his living arrangements. I thought that was a seismic move as the king was arriving in Rome on Kirstama's plane.

Kirstama was saying, I would support more inquiries on this. Well, it's really fascinating. I mean, both with the, you know, I cover the Church of England quite a lot and with the royals, the kind of unusual constitutional role of both, the Church of England

being the established church, and clearly it's HM government and the degree to which Parliament can legislate for things, but it tends not to. You know, when it came to the sex abuse scandals in the Church of England, there were MP saying the Church of England is almost, it has an assembly which is like a devolved body of Parliament. You know, the King gives Royal assent to general synod papers in the same ways.

Can MPs, you know, take the ball by the horn, say, look, if the Church of England is being too slow to get its house in order on safeguarding and abuse, can we use our power as MPs for private members' bills and to actually legislate and hold their feet to the fire? There is such reticence, though, isn't there with the royal family? Well, exactly. Which are never spoken about in Parliament.

Well, indeed, that whole convention, and again, it's convention. Yeah. Is it time that, you know, like we've seen with the church, which for decades people probably just thought, well, we don't want to be seen to be interfering in sort of church, despite the fact we have an established church. Is this another floodgate that's going to sort of open where MPs are going to start saying, again, like the church, if you're not going to get your own house in order. And who knows? It feels like something has changed. I mean, you had, beginning of the beginning of. Last week you had Ed Miliband doing the round, towing the official line saying, it's for the royal family to make any further decisions on what else could happen. It's for the royal family. And that was sort of the line coming from government. Then you had, OK, senior opposition MPs like Robert Jenrick, breaking cover saying his words, Prince Andrews is a disgrace. And the taxpayer should not be doing anything for him anymore. He should be out of sight, out of mind. Then you've had private members bill put forward. It feels like there's momentum growing. As much as the palace think that this is sort of subsiding this story, it

It feels like Parliament and ministers and some members of the Parliament are emboldened. I wonder from your experience, do you think that the Palace or the King, in a way, he would almost kind of welcome it? You'd think he would not necessarily want MPs legislating about matters to do with his family, but he might have a reluctance to take certain steps against his own brother for, you know, brotherly loyalty reasons. But then having MPs starting to militate in this way might give him the cover to say, I have to do this because of the clamour.

I think there are two issues with it. I think the first issue is there is huge nervousness at the palace and the royal family that if members of parliament start debating this issue and actually do start talking about it, if there is a, you know, if there is an inquiry. Exactly. Then what else might they start talking about in terms of the family? I think the second issue is there is probably a nervousness of, and I think probably unfounded because I think this is so unique to Prince Anne.

Andrews sort of case. But there's possibly a nervousness that this would set some kind of precedent that Parliament might just start getting rid of titles, left, right and centre when they feel like it. I think this is the big question. And actually, the Andrew question is almost forcing this matter now, because of refusal to sort of play by the old rules of convention. Yeah. You know, that if pressure goes on you, you move out. I think the risk for the royal family is that people start talking about putting it on a more constitutional basis. Or we don't have a written constitution, a lot of it's by convention in the UK. And actually, are we going to start seeing a The situation with MPs say, well, hang on a sec.

You know, we should have the power to say, we're not going to let Prince Andrews, just take, for example, live in the Royal Lodge. We should have the powers to regulate this stuff. And obviously, in the moment, there's no power. They're all sick with raw and for overcoat. And it's bounced. It feels like the responsibility is bounced from Parliament to the Royal Family, back to Parliament,

you say back to you, back to you, and it's not going anywhere. But people want something. It feels like that. That voluntary relinquishment of the titles doesn't feel like it's done the job. And by that point, It had become increasingly clear that the king would have to act. Questions about Andrew's titles, his position within the institution,

and even his crown estate lease were no longer contained within the palace. They were gathering real momentum in Parliament and in public debate. And then, just days later, on the night of October 30th, Buckingham Palace issued an extraordinary statement. And this time, it came not. not from Andrew, but from the king himself, and it marked a decisive break in the whole affair. The king announced that Andrew would be stripped of all his remaining titles,

including the title of Prince, which he'd held since birth. It set in motion a series of formal processes to remove every remaining honour and also confirmed that Andrew would leave Royal Lodge, his long-standing home in Windsor Great Park. It was, without exaggeration, one of the most. significant royal decisions in generations. And certainly one of the biggest stories either of us has covered on the Royal Beat. And to unpack it all, we were joined by George Greenwood again, along with the Times' chief political correspondent, Aubrey Allegresey.

It is an extraordinary development. I think Parliament has had a part to play in it, and we'll talk about that in a moment, because you have been reporting all week that there was more pressure building in Parliament. We had that development, didn't we, just midweek, of the Public Accounts Committee, writing to the Treasury, right into the Crown Estate, asking for an explanation about that lease, what has been described as a cast iron lease. Tell us how that played into it, do you think? Certainly. So, I mean, there have been a number of routes through which parliamentarians have been seeking to apply pressure to the royal family in really an unprecedented way. By convention, MPs do not get involved in the affairs of the royal family. They barely even pass comment on them,

in public in things like the broadcast media, let alone within the Chamber of the Houses of Parliament. So the Public Accounts Committee had written this quite detailed three-page letter, both to the Treasury and to the Crown Estate, demanding a set of explanations about Andrew's circumstances and raising concerns and questions about the value for money of those arrangements. Separately to that, you had a bill that was going to be published by a backbench MP, Rachel Maskell, next week, which was designed. to start trying to strip Andrew of his titles, because of course, there needs to be legislation because this hasn't been done since 1919. And she was preparing as the MP for York, Andrew obviously being the Duke of York, to try and start that parliamentary process and press Downing Street into agreeing. Now, obviously, the government has tried to maintain an air of neutrality in this situation.

They've said, this is a matter for Buckingham Palace, and the palace didn't seem to want to take up parliamentary time by debating this issue when obviously there are lots of other pressing ones. But behind the scenes, ministers have certainly been very frustrated by Andrew. They've branded him privately to me, an idle disgrace. And the government can give a sort of wink and a nod to MPs that it doesn't want to do certain things. If it thinks they're acting out of line, it doesn't seem to have done that in the case of MPs who have been agitating over the last few weeks. So there hasn't been an attempt to stop or suppress this effort.

George, you wrote a piece last week that, again, there was an enormous reaction to when you managed to get hold of Andrew's lease. with the Crown Estate over Royal Lodge. And it really felt at that point that the public mood, it just sort of went into a different sphere, didn't it? And that's fed into the pressure from Parliament too. I think that's very true. I think as we've been reporting on for years and Andrew, there has been scandal after scandal,

new details about how long you knew Epstein for, how long he kept in touch with him, other people completely separate to Epstein, who they're questionable, how do I put it, it's politely questionable views on whether he should have maintained those relationships. But I think that what really hit home to people was a bit of one rule for them, one rule for us, which with any royal family is the risk.

And the lack of transparency over the whole issue has been so notable, hasn't it? And that's been something that Parliament has picked up on too. Precisely. And this is something that comes with all royal finances as has been written. While the public element of royal funding is very well. established, i.e. We have the money from the crown estate that goes to fund the royal public works. A lot of money the royals have is privately held, but privately held basically because the historic role as monarchs. There's very little transparency around that. We don't get to see the royal

wills about how money's passed down with generations. We don't get to understand the structure, the trusts that fund their operations. We don't know their full property assets in the same way as any company. And I think, therefore, the Andrews story was really a risk for the Royals because it started to draw attention to this lack of transparency around how they operate. And it does feel as though the genie can't be put back in the bottle now. Expectations around transparency and candor have shifted

and looks likely to shape how the monarchy operates going forward. But what made the timing? of the Andrew affair even more striking was that it unfolded so shortly after what many at the palace regarded as their most significant diplomatic success of the year, the state visit of President Trump. That visit delivered everything

a state occasion is designed to project. From the fanfare and military parades to the state banquet at Windsor, it was the monarchy operating at full ceremonial force. And whilst it may have looked like pomp and passion, It was also a carefully calibrated exercise in soft power. Every detail from the language used to the symbolism deployed was designed with its American audience in mind.

At the time, we spoke to Max Foster, London correspondent for CNN, about how the visit played, not just here in the UK, but across the Atlantic, and why it seemed to land so effectively with Donald Trump himself. Charles is so experienced in this. He would have seen how Trump responds in situations. He reacts to the people in front of him. Yes. You can pretty much put anything to him in front of him,

and he will respond to that and be quite positive about it. I think it felt like such a formal speech, but it was so sophisticated, and it was all built up to the way Charles built up to it during the day was extraordinary. The flagery. I mean, the whole day, I thought the gifts that were exchanged were fascinating too.

The gift that really struck me was, talk about laying it on with the trowel, was the union flag that flew. Lou of a Buckingham Palace on the day of Trump's inauguration in January as a gift. I mean, you can imagine how he will take that back and literally or metaphorically unfurled that flag. It felt like an endorsement from the British monarchy. Yeah. How do you think that will play max to your audience, CNN in the States?

We get very caught up with what was unexpected, the scale of it and all the details, twice as many can and one of ground. Which Trump has hammered home at every opportunity. To the untrained eye, it looked very expected. Yeah. It was the castle. It was the cavalry. It was the bands. It was the ultimate fairy tale experience. I know that we've, there's been commentary here. There's been commentary in the US about how sanitised it felt because what's the point in a carriage procession if there's no members of the public? But on another level, it was the perfect TV event. As he said, you're going to get some beautiful pictures. The Americans were watching on TV and it was perfection. It was a show. We are used to walking around that table preview at either Bucking Palace or Windsor Castle

and we go around and we look at the name places and we're like, oh, like the French one, there's Kristen Scott Thomas, there's Sarelt and John, there's Mitchager. Where were the cleanies? There was none of that last night. There weren't lovies. There were all the tech bros.

There was Sam Moulburn, the head of Open AI and the man behind ChatGBT, Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, Tim Cook from Alvin. Apple. Satya and Adela from Microsoft. They are the celebs in terms of what Starman needs and wants in terms of inward investment here and what Trump feels he can bring. It hasn't had a relationship with Hollywood execs in the past. Certainly Democrats would have Hollywood execs in the White House all the time. And if we talk about the monarchy being something that defines us to the world, Hollywood defines America

to the world, and he's redefining that as tech. So he brings in the tech bros as his Hollywood in a way. I think it also made, it added, people are drawn to celebrity and where was a celebrity last night? It was all in the royal family. The royal family. Yeah, it was. And that's, I mean, we've done trips to America and Canada. And when you, I remember doing a trip, the first William and Kate's first ever trip to Canada in California. And being in Canada for the first 10 days was all about monarchy and constitution and history,

because, of course, that's Canada's monarchy too. when we moved to Los Angeles to do a couple of days of engagement with something, it all became about celebrity and seeing how William and Kate were viewed as mega celebrities in Hollywood. A level above celebrity, I'd argue, because the difference between America and the UK is that they can become head of state. Yes. We can't. It keeps the lid on us a bit. I think that speaks to our uptightness when they look at us. I do, genuinely.

Can't aspire to that. You can aspire to the top office in America. part of that is you can be anything and do anything. But what you can't become is a member of the royal family without marrying in or being born in. And that is this unattainable celebrity. It's a level above which makes it even more enigmatic, I think. The three of us have travelled with the royals around the world and each country's got a different relationship with them. The American fascination with royalty for me is not what we think it is, which is Princess Diana, Kate, Megan at the time when she was here.

It was always the queen, Queen Elizabeth II. And this that we saw, this pomp and pageantry, the castle. And this refinement, this class, this history. And so it was always a question for me, was Donald Trump's fascination with Queen Elizabeth the second because of his heritage? And it's amazing to me that he's transferred the same adoration to Charles and now to William as well. So that's a real triumph and interesting.

So it is monarchy is interested in, specifically British monarchy because he doesn't have the same fascination or deference to the Middle Eastern Monarchy. And linking the history and heritage to his own heritage. So it's history and class. And I don't know what it is specifically, but he's fascinated by that. And America's fascinated by that. Staying with America and 2025 was also the year Prince Harry, now very much an American-facing royal figure, met the king in person for the first time in 19 months. And it raised a question we kept coming back to throughout the year, whether the monarchy is now operating across two very different centres of gravity, an official court here in the UK and alongside it, something looser and less defined in California,

a kind of royal outpost built around the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. But what interested us most about the Sussex story this year wasn't just the headlines or the optics. It was a deeper question about identity. What happens when a British prince tries to live as an American-style celebrity while still carrying the weight of royal history. And will that transition ever really be completed? We spoke to Mark Landler, London Bureau Chief of the New York Times and Kiara Brown from the Times' Lux magazine about how the Sussexes are viewed from the US and what that reveals about where they are now. In terms of how you followed the Harry and Megan story from here across the pond and how it's played out, have you been surprised. Have you been

surprised by any of the twists and turns. Because they have been quite extreme some of them. There have. I mean, one thing that strikes me about the transition that they've made is that it's a sort of an incomplete transition because Harry still very clearly and visibly feels pulled by his family history, his role in the monarchy, even though he's now not a working royal. He's just written an essay, The Best of British, what it means to be, why it's so great to be British. Yeah, and by the way, talking in a way about what you just said, Kiara, about the sort of British banter at football games or in a pub, again, the ability to sort of be self-deprecating and make fun of yourself and your friends. But one of the thing that struck me, and you've seen it recently with Harry, is he occasionally trips up on the kind of imperatives of being an American-style celebrity and being a British royal.

And a really interesting, albeit trivial example of this, but telling, was when he went to the World Series, baseball World Series, as a guest of the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. There's a cap and he wore a bright blue Dodgers cap, which is classically what you would do if you were invited to cheer for the Dodgers by the owner of the Dodgers. The problem is Harry is a British prince and he was also about to go visit Canada, a member of the Commonwealth, which was also. the home of the Toronto Blue Jays, the team playing the Dodgers. So Harry had this kind of cringy moment where he had to apologize in Canada for having worn a Dodgers cap. And he said, well, you know, I wore it under duress and and I really, you know, did want to cheer for Toronto. And but to me that really kind of captured it. This is the kind of thing where if he was Brad Pitt or, you know, Shaquille O'Neal or any other celebrity who might show up in row three,

of Dodger Stadium, this would have been an odd issue. It would have been an odd issue. And yet for Harry, it did become briefly an issue. And it kind of, to my mind, really showed the tensions that he still has to occasionally navigate between his kind of royal history and lineage and his life in California. I also, sorry, I just to say, like, I also think that, like, that role of royal as statesmen And like, Royal as person who's cutting ribbons at factories in small towns is not something Americans really understand. Like, I think, and I think, again, people said this at link, but that's where Megan may have misunderstood.

And like you said, the flip side of that is I feel Harry maybe is a bit like, okay, well, what's the, what's the service part of this new life? Like, where's the ribbon cutting element, basically? In a funny way, I think it's easier now for Megan because Megan can fully embrace being an American style, lifestyle, guru, and celebrity. She has this Netflix series where she sort of talks about crafting and brings in famous friends to chat with her in a kitchen that's not actually her kitchen. Does it play out better in American here? It doesn't play out so well. No. I mean, one thing I noted in my coverage of the last time I wrote about this was how savage the reviews of this were in the UK.

I mean, people just took that series apart and just made fun of it. And I think in the U.S., I'm not going to say this series. has been a big hit. It hasn't. It hasn't been one of Netflix's top 10 shows, which is telling, given how much money they're spending on it. But I think Americans would have taken, in a way, a less hard-edged view of it. They would have thought, okay, another kind of self-involved celebrity talking about how she crafts with her friends, you know, but I don't think Americans would have found it particularly offensive. I think some people in Britain just looked at it and were contemptuous of the whole thing. Having said all that, you know, Megan can keep herself busy and

make good money. She doesn't have to apologize to anyone for it and Americans understand what the game is. Harry's in a much different position. He can't do a show like that. It's harder for him. It's much harder for him. So in a way, I feel like the more time that passes, I almost see the two of them diverging a little bit where Megan's role is more and more comfortable for her, despite the slings and arrows she's taking back here in the UK. Harry's role, to my mind, still feels awkward, which I think is why you reported recently that he wants to spend more time here. And I think that's what that reflects in a sense. The role of the media in covering the royal family has long been a subject of debate. But what felt new this year was how directly the royals

themselves chose to engage with it. And one of the most revealing insights into the future of the monarchy didn't come from a crisis or a state occasion, but from a rather unexpected source. Welcome to London. Never felt more like a tourist. Thank you. Why don't you pop down to the castle, William, from the Prince of Wales. Your Royal Highness, best to see you.

And that was Eugene Levy, the comedian and writer, and his Apple TV series The Reluctant Traveller. In it, Levy spent time with the Prince of Wales, offering a surprisingly candid glimpse of what a future reign might look like under William and Catherine. It was a moment that felt quietly significant, informal but still carefully poised, but revealing in a way royal interviews rarely are. I want to create a world in which my son is proud of what we do, a world and a job that actually does impact people's life for the better.

That is caveated with, I hope we don't go back to some of the practices in the past that Harry and I had to grow up in, and I'll do everything I can't to make sure we don't regress in that situation. It sounds like the monarchy will be shifting in a slightly different direction. I think it's safe to say that change is on my agenda. Change for good. And I embrace that and I enjoy that change. I don't fear it.

That's the bit that excites me is the idea of being able to bring some change. Not overly radical change, but changes that I think need to happen. Here was the heir to the throne, a future head of state speaking personally about the pressures of monarchy, reflecting on family challenges

and describing 2024 as the hardest year of his life. But he was also articulating something more forward-looking, an approach to modernising the institution by testing each tradition against a simple question, does it still have relevance in the modern age? Well, an extraordinary year for the royal family,

wide-ranging, unpredictable, and at times genuinely monumental. It's hard to imagine another 12 months quite like it. And something tells me the story of the monarchy in the year ahead will be no less important. What are you expecting in 2026? Well, you can email us at the Royals at the Year's, Thetimes.co.com. And do follow us to make sure you don't miss our inside take on the Royal Story in the coming year.

So join us next week. But for now, bye, Roya. Bye, Kate.