The Royals with Roya and Kate - What does the King do about the Duke and Duchess of York?

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

After emails emerged this week showing that the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson was still in touch with paedophile financier, Jeffrey Epstein after she had publicly denounced him, the charities she once supported have disowned her. Before this latest episode it had looked as if the palace would restore some links with the Duchess, but the King’s faith in Ferguson now seems misguided. So what happens now?Photograph: Credit - Karwai Tang / Getty Images Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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PWC refers to the PWC network and all one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Welcome to the Royals with me, Royneiko. And me, Kate Mansy. We're the royal editors of the Times and the Sunday Times. And this week, a question. What does the king do about his brother, Prince Andrew, and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York?

Here in the UK, the headlines return to the legacy of Geoffrey Eiff. Epstein. And this time it wasn't the Duke of York, Prince Andrew, who was in the firing line, but Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, his former wife. Over the course of several days, we saw headlines such as Fergie in apology to Pido Epstein. Charities dumped Duchess over Epstein emails and ultimately, is it game over for Fergie, the Duchess of disaster. So now the monarchy finds itself caught in an all too familiar dilemma. But do they have the confidence to move forwards when this scandal and the family fractures it's created keep sailing into public view.

Roya, I don't know about you, but last week, at the end of last week, I was thinking how well it had all gone for the royal family. We had had the pomp and publicity. We had the sense of confidence there seemed to be at Windsor Castle as the king hosted President Trump, the sense that the family was doing what they were meant to be doing. Yeah, and even the sort of battles that have been raging with, Prince Harry, the sort of war of words between the two camps. Even that seemed to be

exciting a little bit with all the relief that Harry and the King had finally met after 19 months. But what a difference a week makes. After President Donald Trump went away from the state banquet, feeling very pleased, the royal family should be feeling self-assured, triumphant even, as they cement their role as an irreplaceable national asset. But there's always something, isn't there, to bring it all crashing back down. What was that this week? Well, the butts that brought it crashing back down are all the butts around and the ands and the whats and the who's around the Duchess of York. So here's what we know.

On April the 26th, 2011, the Duchess of York, who we know is Fergie, allegedly emailed Geoffrey Epstein calling him a steadfast, generous and supreme friend, seemingly to apologize to Epstein for publicly distancing herself from him in a. interviews. And this email, which she hasn't denied, came after one interview in particular, just a month beforehand, in which she said that she appalled paedophilia and any sexual abuse of children. She also said that she would give back the £15,000 from Geoffrey Epstein that had been used to settle some of her debts. And this is the clincher. She said that she would quote, never have anything to do with him again. But now her spokesman says that her email to Epstein was written under duress to avoid being sued for defamation. A spokesman for Sarah Ferguson also claimed that Epstein had made a threatening Hannibal Lecter-style phone call to her.

But however you want to spin it, it's clear that the damage from this email has already been done. And what we've seen this week is multiple charities cut ties with Fergie, which has been a real blow to her because she has built up a body of public work with children's charities and breast cancer charities. and she isn't a working role, but every single time Epstein's name is brought up, the institution is linked to a convicted criminal who pleaded guilty in 2008 to procuring and trafficking children for sex. And was jailed for the crime. And the big question now is, is silence from the palace enough?

Or does the king need a proper strategy to put an end to all and any connection between Andrew Fergie and the rest of the institution once and for all? I mean, let's just go back to that email, which this week has been just so damning. Sarah Ferguson wrote to Epstein, I know you feel hellaciously let down by me from what you were either told or read, and I must humbly apologise to you and your heart for that. It's just weeks after she said she'd had nothing to do with him. Yeah.

I mean, the wording of it was excruciating. It's very, it's quite, it's very gushing. And we know that Fergie admitted that Epstein had paid off a debt of around £15,000. But I suppose what the real sort of core of the issue here is, why did she want to keep so on side with him? Was it really the threat of legal action? Isn't that what lawyers are for? Why wouldn't you have lawyers responding to Geoffrey Epstein's very serious under-jurest style threatening? It doesn't read like a letter or an email that's been drafted by a lawyer.

no does it in response to any kind of defamation threat at all so also presumably with no reputation to defend at that stage Jeffrey Epstein had already pleaded guilty yeah to sex offences yeah and been jailed for them so it's really hard to justify any relationship going forward not least because in public she was saying one thing behind the scenes it was quite another and that's why so many charities this week was so quick within the space of 24 hours we had seven charities, didn't we, all saying, thanking her for her, you know, work in the past, but saying it's no longer appropriate. And I suppose what is interesting about what's come out in the last few days is that Fergie

has, she has sort of been rehabilitated, hasn't she, in the last, you know, a couple of years, 10 years. Certainly in the last three years, the king has brought her closer, actually. She has positioned herself as a, she stood by Andrew, and we'll talk about that a bit more later, but, you know, distance herself from Epstein enough. and had, you know, a brush with him, but apologised for it, was very open about apologising for that, and was therefore able to carry on with her public work with children's charities and other charities. I think now it's very, very hard to see how she would regroup from that and go forwards, given what's come out,

because it feels like the public for quite a long time since 2007 have thought something quite different. Yeah, I mean, and this isn't just the kind of press reaction to that email, like you say. there's seven charities in the space of one day. It started just before 1pm on Monday with a little-known charity Julia's house and it was just this kind of trickle of water and then by tea time the dam had just sort of burst and we had seven UK charities that day

distancing themselves from Sarah Ferguson. The following day we had a youth council in America which also said that she had stepped down from being associated with them. And the language around that as well was really interesting. So a lot of the charity said it was inappropriate for her to continue. And one actually went further. So Natasha's allergy research foundation, which was set up to help allergy sufferers like Natasha. I think that was even more strongly worded that they said that

they, you know, they were so upset by what they'd read. And a lot of these charities were affiliated with young people or children, teenage cancer trust being worn. And she's worked with them for decades. I do wonder, 35 years, and this will be a huge blow to her. My side thought, as all this was coming out, was again about Andrew and Fergie's daughters, who half the last few years kept a much lower profile, although, you know, usually is involved with and was part of forming this anti-slavery

and trafficking charity. And that has been, I would imagine, extremely difficult for her in the last few years, given her father's association with Epstein and his fall from grace. But now to have her mother as well, you know, another fall from grace, when you've got this charity that's all about it's anti-trafficking, how is that going to play out? They've been so involved with Fergie's charity work as well. So on their 18th birthdays, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie were both taken individually on their birthdays to a teenage Cancer Trust unit with their mother. And Beatrice even gave a speech to Mark Fergie's 30th anniversary of being associated with the charity. to say that it's one, we're all one big family. That was just five years ago.

So, you know, they are tied up in this as well. You know, it's been pretty much a lifelong association for them. And that all that has gone and crumbled. And you do wonder how they're going to react to that. One of the sort of big questions that has prompted a lot of coverage and speculation is this time last year, or when they run up to Christmas, we had yet another. And yet another sort of disaster from the Duke of York when it emerged that he had become very friendly and a business associate of a guy called Yang Tembo, who is an alleged Chinese spy,

our secret services say he is. He says he isn't. He denies that. But it was another just extraordinary revelation about the Duke of Hazard as he's come to be known. And he was effectively banned from Sandringham Christmas and Fergie sort of encouraged him to not go to the family Christmas and stayed behind with him. But we're now at a point where you got to sort of ask the question, what else can the king do to sort of keep arm's length? Because we saw, you know, from Andrew, we saw last week him just sauntering in very publicly to the Duchess of Kent's funeral and all the ferrory that caused inside Westminster Cathedral. I know you were there. And you've written a lot about the siege of Royal Lodge and how the king has tried to get him out of.

And the king has kind of given up on that fight. He's not moving. Yeah, it's all tied up in red tape, isn't it? Because, you know, there's sort of heads in hands at the palace at the moment over Andrew and Fergie. because they say, well, look, he's not a working member of the royal family. What else can we do? She's not even married to him anymore. Hasn't been since 1996.

So what can we do? He doesn't receive public money, hasn't done for a long time. Last year, the king cut off that private financial assistance that he was giving him. And so he said, well, you can move into Frogmore Cottage. Andrew felt that that was beneath him. He wanted to stay in Royal Lodge. The king said, fine, you'll have to pay for it yourself, thinking he'll never be able to afford it. He has so far managed to keep up the rent on that and all the other kind of payments and bills.

Who knows for how long? Or where that money's coming from, frankly. So he's a private tenant of the Crown Estate on a long lease. So presumably there are ways and means. You know, there's a chapel within Royal Lodge that's used for royal christenings. So the royal family must be able to have some sort of say. And I've seen the tenancy agreement and actually, it says between the Queen, as was, the late Queen and the Crown Estate.

So it's not cut and dry that the King would have no say in this at all. The things that he has lost, I mean, when he did that disastrous 2019 News Night interview, he stepped back from Royal Life. Then when he settled with Virginia DeFray admitting low liability, but there was a large financial settlement to keep that out of court a few years later and the Queen stripped him of pretty much everything. All his titles, his military. associations, his patronages, his charities. There's not much left to strip away from him. It's all gone

and his HRH styling. Yeah, it's really been stripped of everything. The thing he does retain, he is still a duke, which is the title conferred on him by the queen on his wedding day. The king is not going to strip him of that because the king, whatever he thinks of his brother, and let's be honest, they are not close. He's not vindictive. And I think maybe in Charles's mind, he thinks what would that achieve? It would be like... But also, by virtue of birth, he's always going to be a prince, isn't he? To be honest, to be it sounds better. Yeah, it does sound better. He's sort of damned if he does and damned if he doesn't, the king.

He's in a very tight spot. The problem for him, one of the many problems at the moment, is that I wonder whether, if you look at the last few weeks that we've had, okay, the Harry thing seems temporarily better, but who knows how that will play out. That's been raging for the last few years since Harry left in 2020, you know, the fallout from all the Sussex has fallout from departure. All happened around the same time, didn't it? News night in the end of time.

2019. Harry started 2020. Still going on and I you know the king became king in 2020 we are three years on. It's been a very short reign so far as but it has been I would argue it has been dominated to the point of almost being overshadowed by all of this. They're out doing all this great work which we'll talk about in a moment but the public are talking about this the family dramas and the disgraced and it keeps going this really feels like Fergie's Newsnight moment, doesn't it? Which was Andrew in 2019, which saw him complete fall from grace. Fergie, in the new rain, has been brought closer.

We were saying at the beginning that, you know, we saw her invited to Buckingham Palace to an official reception in May for cancer charities that the King hosted her, essentially, and she had been brought back into the fold. She was a kind of a useful conduit between him and Andrew, speaking sense to him at the end of last year, that perhaps it was better to stay away

from all the public elements of royal family Christmas in light of that alleged spy scandal and she was really quite useful to the king and was repaid if you like by being brought in in a different way. And still felt very close to him. I interviewed her last year just before the Chinese spy stuff came out

and we talked a lot about her. There's no other way to describe it. Very unconventional relationship with Andrew. You know, she still lives with her ex-husband. And she talked about why she still stood by him and described how, you know, caring for him was like caring for a sad man like when her father was left on his own at home when her mother ran off with the polo player years before. But she talked a lot about how she was

still incredibly close to the king and the queen to Charles and Camilla and how much she appreciated that and respected them and wanted to do more for them. I wish they would let me do, I read it back that interview. I wish they would let me do more for them. I wonder. You think now, I think they wish you would do a lot less. But, you know, it was obvious to me talking to about it that she really treasured that link and that they had kind of let her back into the fold, as you say. In what world can you have maintained that level of correspondence with Geoffrey Epstein privately and forgotten about it, hoped it would never come up? I think probably hoped it would never come out.

And now it had been so long since 2011 that perhaps thought that it was safe. The other big question, I suppose, is what else is going to come out? Because you've got to assume, Jeffrey Epstein's estate is the subject of so many. any civil claims, isn't it? There's a lot of ongoing civil claims there, which means presumably a lot of people must have eyes on every single email that was ever sent and received, all the paperwork, all the documents. Well, it is all coming out. I mean, you look at the Bloomberg revelations about Peter Mandelson and this alleged birthday book with President Trump. And in the next couple of months, we are going to have Virginia Giffray's memoir published,

her posthumous memoir published, and you've got to assume that's going to look really bad for Andrew again. Whatever comes out of that, even if there's not a single new fact or revelation, it's all going to come back, isn't it? That would be a talking point. It's a story that's never going to go away. It casts a long shadow. If Charles doesn't do something decisive and really draw a fine line now, definite line between the Yorks, the parents, not the daughters, and the rest of the institution, I think that there could be shrapnel on the monarchy from that kind of bomb blast that's going off there at Royal Lodge, if he's not careful. And I think if he doesn't do anything about it, you can be certain that William will

when he becomes monarch. I suppose it does Charles have the stomach for the fight? You know, he's not known to be confrontational. He was talking a good game last year. There were people, friends of the King, who were saying, this is the siege of Royal Lodge. The King wants him out. He's going to strip him at any money. He picked a fight.

He did. He is a kid. He did. And he picked a fight with his younger brother. and he did not win because Andrew and Fergie are still in Royal Lodge and all this stuff

is still coming out so you know what does it look like you're non-confrontational you're not going to strip him with his title what else can you do

that's the problem and people will say you know close to Charles that he's the head of the Church of England we can't stop him coming to royal funerals he can't be trusted

to turn up and be discreet as we've seen you know King Constantine the Second's Memorial at Windsor last year when he puffed at his chest and led the family down the hill. The worst example, do you remember Prince Phillips Memorial?

Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah. When he... I'm an arm with the queen. Blindsided every single private secretary going and sort of snuck into her car, was filmed all the way from Windsor to London and then walked her up the aisle at the abbey and sat down. And everyone was just like, that wasn't the plan. The last few years have told us is he is going to manoeuvre himself into prime position.

And, I mean, there are our sight, it was pointing out to me, there are a side. side entrances to Westminster Cathedral. He could have very easily gone in discreetly to the Duchess of Kent's funeral and paid his respects. He's never been one for side entrance, has he? No. At PWC, we don't just deliver ideas.

We make them work. With the expertise in tech, you need to outthink and outperform. And we work with you, alongside you, from start to finish. So you can stay ahead. So you can protect what you built. so you can create new value. We build for what's next, so you can get there now. PWC, so you can.

PWC refers to the PWC network and all one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Well, with Andrew and Fergie dragging the monarchy back into the past, the rest of the family has been out doing exactly what most people think a confident monarchy should. Yes, last week with Catherine, him by his side, Prince William met with the families of three little girls who'd been murdered

in a horrific knife attack in Southport last year. Speaking at a new memorial playground, he told the families and friends of the victims, love will always overcome tragedy. Prince William has described it as a symbol of remembrance and resilience before speaking privately with the bereaved parents of six-year-old B.B. King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stankham and nine-year-old Alice to Silver Aguir. And then there was Japan last week, because the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, Edward and Sophie, have been representing the King at Expo 2025 in Osaka, visiting the UK and Japan pavilions and meeting the emperor and empress. Continuing her work with those supported by war,

Sophie also spent time with Ukrainian refugees in Tokyo. And before joining Sophie in Japan, Edward was also in Papua New Guinea on behalf of the King. And then we've got the King. He's got his very full diary. We saw him out in about last week before all of this, well, actually after all of this kicked off. There he was in Barrow. And, you know, having his cancer treatment, he's still, you know, doing all his red boxes. He's dealing with the family dilemmas. He's out trying to do, you know, big engagements. We're about to see a estate visit to the Vatican next month and all of this raging. How much of a dilemma is it in terms of the overshadowing of the public work, which has always been the thing with the family drama, certainly it's always been said to me by Friends of the King,

that is what upsets them the most when the soap operate of the family stuff overshadows the public work. Yeah, because that was, particularly in Southport, in Merseyside, that was such a poignant, emotional return, wasn't it, for Kate and William? They've been there before, and they've met the families before. And they made that pledge, you know, we're not going to leave you, essentially. We're going to keep in touch. We're going to stay in touch. And you could see it really meant a lot to the families who've, you know, worked so hard to keep the legacy of their little girls alive, absolutely heartbreaking. And, you know, that's exactly the thing. You hit the nail on the head there, Royal, with the King and his frustration that all that good work, you know, and raising, you know,

shining a light in places and on subjects that really matter to people. You know, maybe we should just be ignoring the royal drama and focusing on this, perhaps, you know, we're part of the story after all. Well, it got loads of coverage. You know, you and all of the other dailies did tons of coverage on Southport, but it's not what people on the street are going to be talking about this week, is it? Yeah, it's true. Yeah. It is a family sort of drama that fascinates, it continues to fascinate, particularly when there's, you know, public money at stake, and although Sarah and Andrew don't have any public funds anymore, in the public's mind, it's all still part of the same thing. It's part of the monarchy. It's like when you have rogue MPs,

you know, at least you can sack them and they move off. That was a good line in one of our colleagues, Matt Wilkinson from The Sun wrote that Andrew's a bit like Ricky Javis in the office drama. Even after he's been sacked, he keeps turning up at the office still sort of making jokes. Yeah. You know, we make light of it. But actually, it's quite a serious thing. Again, you know, Edward and Sophie in Japan, Papua New Guinea. who's paying attention. I mean, you know, we sent on it and the Sunday times reported on it.

But again, it's as valuable as that work is in terms of bilateral relations, diplomacy. It's not really how people are looking outside the institution looking in going, that's really valuable work. It's all the other stuff. I wonder, you know, with Harry's return a couple of weeks ago and all the coverage and briefing

that went has gone around that and since then with his camp saying, well, he is going to come back a lot more and he does want to come back a lot more. And then you had the counter-briefing from the palace making it very clear, there is no half in, half out. The king really enjoyed, you know, happy to see his son, but there is absolutely no chance of any kind of even semi-public role or even semi-public appearances with this father. There's a lot of cold water pulled on that. Oh yeah, so yeah, well, let's unpack that because that was great fun.

I looked at that and thought, there's one very strong message coming in from Harry's team. That's being looked at by the palace and the king's team going absolutely no way. And it's quite rare for the palace to kind of slap down a story so publicly like that. And they did. They really did. I mean, one of the lines that I have to say made me laugh and then made me think, God, I bet that has not landed down very well in Windsor, was the inference in one of the papers at the weekend that Harry felt I could come here and relieve some of the burden from William.

I could share some of the burden. I think the blood pressure at Ray Mill would have been going up, don't you think? I think the blood pressure. I think Williams's blood pressure because Williams sitting there thinking, mate, you left. You left five years ago. So the burden on me has grown. And that is the thing, as I wrote a couple weeks ago, that people will talk about why that rift is so bad.

All the things that he's done have infuriated William, the memoir, the documentaries. It's been so stressful for William. But it's the fact that his decision to leave has huge repercussions for William and his family and his children's futures. So for anyone close to Harry to suggest that Harry could come back and, you know, share the load and take some engagements to ease William's load, I just thought, oh, suspect that's not gone down very well at Adelaide Cottage. Yeah, no, what must Camilla make of it all? Not thrilled I was told, not thrilled I was told about that meeting, but what can she do?

He's his son. I don't think it looks bad for Charles. I think they're right probably to stamp on any suggestion that Harry can come back because they are sticking with the late Queen's line. No, half in, half out. Yeah. You're either with us or you're out. But I wonder whether back in Montecito this week, Harry kind of steps back a little bit and goes,

With all of this Andrew and Fergie stuff raging again... Maybe I've said my bit now. And maybe sort of thinks, I'll do my thing and it's better that I'm not half in half out. And I have a sort of certain arm's length distance from the institution now and I do my own thing. And I'm not part of that. I think he's always felt a bit sore that he's been lumped in with Prince Andrew as well. Because he, you know, he says, well, I've never done anything wrong. All I wanted was just go off and live my life the way I wanted to live it and do my work in the way I wanted to do it.

It didn't feel I could do that at the palace. and didn't feel happy to do that at the palace, whereas Andrew, you know, he is acting like he's half in half hour, Andrew, you know, even though he's completely out and frozen out, but he looks more part of the family than Harry does, and that must great. Yeah. I mean, someone years ago said to me, when I was working on a piece about Harry, someone who knew him incredibly well said for so many years when Harry was sort of growing up in the royal family then into his 20s and his early 30s, his greatest fear was that he would, he didn't want to

become Prince Andrew. And by that, the friend meant he didn't want to lose purpose or direction. And he looked at, you know, Harry looked at Andrew and just thought, what's your role? What's your place in this institution? I don't want that to happen to me. And I guess it hasn't because, you know, whatever path he's taken, and it's a very different part of the rest of the world family, he's got freedom and he's been able to sort of carve out a role, still carving out a A lot of people would say we're not entirely sure what Harry's doing, but he seems to be more on a road than Andrew who sort of flailed around and then fell into company with a lot of dodgy rich people.

Yeah. Well, perhaps because we had Harry the week before the presidential visit, we've had all this coming up again with Andrew and Fergie, the week after the presidential visit, it just made me think it could have been such a different story. We didn't have that many members of the royal family, really. It looked quite thin at that state banquet. It did look thin.

So who was there? The king, the queen, the Waleses. The Gloucesters. Sophie and Edwards were in Japan. Princess Anne and Tim Lawrence were at the state banquet, but not at the private lunch with Trump. So do we need more members of the royal family at state bank? Because I think that's quite a lot, actually, now I think about it. You do wonder what it would look like if Andrew and Fergie were together and popular and still working members of the royal family.

Ditto, Harry and Megan. We're thinking kind of in an alternative universe, really. The most extraordinary thing about that is the reach of Geoffrey Epstein. The reach across, you know, a state visit by Trump, Trump's battling, constantly battling questions of people asking, you know, for the Epstein files to be released. The UK had just lost its ambassador to America last week, Peter Mandelson, because of his close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

You don't have Andrew and Fergie anymore. and it is extraordinary. You know, I've been speaking to people at the palace and I think there is a genuine fear that there's more to come. So, Kate, in one week, we've had a scandal that won't die, no sign of it going anywhere,

a royal riff still unresolved, and a textbook example of soft power, abroad and at home. But all of it circles back to the same question. How does the Royal Family manage its image when past, present and future are all pulling in different directions. It's a question without an easy answer, unfortunately, but one, the institution is certainly going to keep facing

because in a world of constant headlines, perception really is everything. Well, we will be watching. We certainly will. Bye for now. Bye. At PWC, we don't just deliver ideas. We make them work.

With the expertise in tech you need to outthink and outperform, and we work with you, alongside you, from start to finish. So you can stay ahead, so you can protect what you built, so you can create new value. We build for what's next, so you can get there now. PWC, so you can. PWC refers to the PWC Network and all one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity.