The furore surrounding Prince Harry and Meghan Markle has made it easy to forget about the other younger members of the Royal Family. Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’s daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, have been relatively peripheral presences on the world stage until now. Damned by association with their disgraced father, the pair have kept a relatively low profile. It’s something of a surprise then to see Eugenie not only appear at the World Economic Form in Davos, but give an interview there in which she offers trenchant views on the climate crisis. Her son August, she declares, ‘is going to be an activist from two years old.’
Some will find Eugenie’s comments refreshing; others, surprising – given that Eugenie may be best known for her marriage to a tequila brand ambassador and for working as a director for the art firm Hauser & Wirth.
It is easy to mock the princess as a well-meaning but detached observer
Eugenie is not a ‘working Royal’, but her charitable interests have included everything from taking part in anti-slavery campaigns to helping the Salvation Army with packing food during the peak of the Covid pandemic. Unlike her elder sister, who has occasionally sought something of a public role, Eugenie has largely remained under the radar. Until now.
In an ‘in conversation’ event with Arctic Humanity founder Gail Whiteman and Reuters editor-at-large Axel Threlfall, the princess declared that:
‘Every decision we now make has to be for…August, what he’s going to be able to look at and do and how he’s going to live his life. But I think also, as a mother, you all of a sudden, totally you change; your hormones change, everything changes. Like now I’m scared of flying and things like that and I would never be before’
Eugenie also revealed some domestic details, saying that ‘at home we have no plastic, we try to as much as possible have no plastic and I’m trying to teach him (August) that. But it’s a battle.’
She described herself as an optimist, a ‘glass half full’ person, but also hinted at greater concerns:
‘Sometimes the facts and the figures and sometimes having the dinners do give you that sort of sense of frustration and doom and gloom.’
It is easy to mock the princess as a well-meaning but detached observer, whose wealth and privilege insulate her from choices the less well-off have to make on a daily basis – often involving the use of plastic in the home. Yet there may be a wider agenda at play here.
The royal princesses are known to be sympathetic and close to Harry and Meghan, often working as an informal conduit between them and the other members of the Royal Family; Eugenie even made an appearance in the Harry and Meghan Netflix series, the only royal to do so. The Duke and Duchess’s views on climate activism are, of course, well known; in 2019, Harry said: ‘This week, led by Greta [Thunberg], the world’s children are striking. There’s an emergency. It’s a race against time, and one which we are losing.’
The timing, and content, of Princess Eugenie’s comments may be purely coincidental. But her conscious echoing of a modish cause so publicly espoused by Team Sussex places her firmly on the side of Prince Harry and his wife. It is a very public indication – and possibly an unwelcome one in the run-up to the Coronation – that not all members of ‘the Firm’ think the same.
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