There is a saying, variously attributed either to Euripides or Shakespeare, that is something along the lines of ‘the sins of the father will be visited upon the children.’ By anyone’s reckoning, this is deeply unfair and wholly undeserved, but the treatment of Prince Andrew’s children, the Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, will soon bear out the dread-laden maxim. Virtually all the international attention has so far come upon their parents, the Andrew formerly known as Prince and the unduchessed Sarah Ferguson. But now, with the inevitability of good hangings preventing bad marriages, interest is going to alight upon them.
A pile-on towards these young women is coming, and it will be brutal
The question is whether Beatrice and Eugenie deserve to be pilloried. At first glance, both lead fairly blameless private lives. Beatrice has a string of the kind of decidedly 21st century professions that sound impressive but add up to very little – vice-president of strategic partnerships for Afiniti, an AI software company – and Eugenie has the more interesting role of director at the art company Hauser + Wirth. She is, of all things, also co-founder of an anti-slavery charity, where its focus includes helping victims of sex-trafficking. This last fact has been remarked upon many times while discussing her father’s alleged activities, not least his involvement with Virginia Giuffre (which he denies). It seems an ironic twist in this sorry tale.
The princesses have hardly had it easy up until now. They have been criticised for their looks, their husbands, their privilege, their titles, their clear desire to be on the royal payroll as working royals and, above all else, their parents. Yet, as the old saying goes, nobody asked to be born, and so criticising them for the apparent misfortune of being the scions of Randy Andy and Fergie, the gauche creator of Budgie the Little Helicopter, is a low blow. However, this does not mean that this will not now be the primary line of attack upon them. After all, there has been a glee in some of the more vituperative assaults on the disgraced parents that even the most committed republican might find distasteful: it is not enough that their home, titles and dignity be stripped from them, but ideally they might be hung from the yardarm at dawn, presumably in homage to Andrew’s former naval career. And now, attention has inevitably spread to the children.
So, what did they know? Did they take the Epstein money too? How can they still be royal princesses when their parents aren’t? Asking these questions of two innocent young women might be unfair – it is unfair – but it is how public opinion works. Let’s also not forget their parents’ determination – classic pushy parenting in action, at the highest conceivable level – that they would have princess titles, while neither Princess Anne nor Prince Edward ever saw it necessary that their children would need such baubles.
I suspect that Hauser + Wirth would probably not have made Eugenie Smith an associate director at 25. And no doubt Afiniti, Beatrice’s current employer, has hardly been unhappy about benefits derived from her royal status hitherto. But these are not concerns that should bother the average person. Nepotism is rife in every aspect of public life today and it would undoubtedly have been just the same if they had come from any other number of aristocratic or well-connected titles. A pile-on towards these young women is coming, and it will be brutal. Even those implacably opposed to the activities of their parents should feel a sense of profound distaste at the idea that they should be humiliated and disgraced simply because of the fortune – that now, increasingly, seems a misfortune – of their once-privileged birth.
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