Kate’s frosty relationship with Beatrice and Eugenie: Royal insiders reveal how Princess has always been ‘cautious’ about Andrew’s daughters – and latest Epstein revelations could be the death knell for their future in the Royal Family

The Epstein Files could put further strain on an already uneasy relationship between the Prince and Princess of Wales and Beatrice and Eugenie – with tensions between the four existing long before the latest revelations.

The most recent tranche of documents has raised serious questions about how much the two Princesses knew about their parents’ dealings with the paedophile financier.

One email sent by Epstein in 2015 – after he was convicted for soliciting sex from girls as young as 14 – boasted to a friend that Beatrice ‘liked’ him.

It also emerged that Beatrice helped advise her mother on how to placate Epstein after Fergie called him a paedophile while apologising for accepting a £15,000 bailout from the convicted sex offender in a 2011 interview. 

She also played a key role in facilitating her father’s catastrophic 2019 Newsnight interview, and Beatrice and Eugenie must now face the possibility that the drip-feed of Epstein revelations could see them ousted from royal life as well.

After King Charles stripped Andrew, 65, of all his military and royal titles, experts have suggested the Prince of Wales might take the same hard-line approach with his cousins.

William, 43, will be watching closely as the Epstein Files continue to be made public while evaluating Beatrice and Eugenie’s future within the Firm – especially considering his wife’s frosty relationship with them.

‘William and Kate don’t appear to be close to either of the sisters. They haven’t got that much in common,’ a source told the Daily Mail. 

Eugenie’s closeness with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is said to have left the Princess of Wales ‘cautious’ since Megxit, and Kate is ‘seldom seen’ with either sister, they added.

In 2016, a photograph of the sisters trailing in the wake of Kate at a Buckingham Palace garden party made headlines, particularly because the Princesses were giving her, what appeared to be, some rather chilly looks.

‘William has made a point of inviting Beatrice and Eugenie, and other cousins, to help him host a Buckingham Palace garden party once a year. But there’s no sign of him ever wanting his cousins to be taxpayer-funded working royals. That’s been made pretty clear,’ the Daily Mail’s royal source said.

‘Eugenie, particularly, seems to be closer to Harry than she is to William.’

Any concerns that Kate and William have about the York sisters will only be aggravated by their parents’ continued association with Epstein after he was jailed in 2008 for soliciting underage sex from girls as young as 14. 

The release of files connected to Epstein – who died by suicide while awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges in 2019 – contains further damning evidence of their friendship with the billionaire sex offender yet. 

Astonishing emails unearthed by The Mail on Sunday revealed Fergie was so desperate to cosy up to the convicted paedophile that ‘she was the first to celebrate’ his release from jail ‘with her two daughters in tow’. 

Emails reportedly show the group met at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion, where the paedophile served vegetable lasagne prepared by a Parisian chef. 

The Daily Mail has also found an email from Epstein in 2015 where he told a friend not to worry about meeting Beatrice at an event in Mexico because she ‘liked’ him. The paedophile famously attended her lavish Victorian-themed 18th birthday masked ball at Royal Lodge with Ghislaine Maxwell and Harvey Weinstein in 2006.

Further, Princess Beatrice’s support for her father’s car crash Newsnight interview about Epstein and Virginia Giuffre is ‘absolutely cataclysmic’ for any hopes she has of having official royal duties when William becomes King, another expert said. 

A BBC producer revealed that Princess Beatrice had attended a negotiation meeting with her father ahead of the interview in November 2019.

As well as attending a pre-production meeting with producer Sam McAlister, with a notebook and pen, Beatrice famously became Andrew’s ‘alibi’ during the interview when he claimed he was collecting her from a party at Pizza Express on the night he supposedly had sex with Ms Giuffre. 

Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams said: ‘We know that the sisters, especially Eugenie, were friendly with the Sussexes, though reports vary as to whether this remains the case.

‘It is therefore unsurprising that Catherine appears to have been cautious in her relations with them.

‘The sisters face an enormous challenge, being happily married, well adjusted and with careers, but clearly wanting to do more charity work as princesses.

‘However, their parents are engulfed in a very serious crisis which may prove absolutely cataclysmic’.

Mr Fitzwilliams added: ‘Andrew’s alibi on Newsnight of celebrating Beatrice’s 13th birthday at the now infamous Pizza Express in Woking involved her in the Newsnight interview. Reports have indicated that she favoured it.

‘Catherine will have noted the problems the sisters face, no doubt with some sympathy, but will undoubtedly also be wary, given the sensitivity of their current situation.

‘Whatever the nature of the relationship between them, it is unlikely we will see them together with her very soon.’

In fact, the latest revelations will certainly complicate the Waleses’s relationship with King Charles’s nieces even further. 

Although Andrew was stripped of his titles and kicked out of Royal Lodge over the scandal, the girls were allowed to retain their titles and even joined the Royal Family for Christmas at Sandringham last year. 

While the Royal Family rallied around the princesses at the time, who must have been conflicted about spending Christmas away from their parents, a tense moment outside St Mary Magdalene church stirred speculation of a divide.  

Eagle-eyed fans on X/Twitter suggested his son, Prince William, might have had some reservations about the family reunion after footage appeared to show the future King giving Eugenie the cold shoulder. 

As she walked beside him, William avoided making eye contact with Eugenie and instead remained focused on fixing his scarf before catching up with the Princess of Wales and his daughter, Princess Charlotte, 10.

Fans on X recalled an earlier Christmas when William seemingly ‘scarfed’ his estranged sister-in-law Meghan, adding it’s his ‘go-to avoidance mechanism’.

Body language expert Judi James acknowledged the future King’s ‘suspicious history’ when it comes to using his scarf as a ‘bit of business’ to keep his attention diverted during ‘awkward’ royal run-ins.

Calling his behaviour an ‘act of distraction’, she told the Daily Mail: ‘It could be coincidental, but William usually does this when there is, what could become, an awkward moment in the offing.’ 

She recalled how William was ‘stung’ when his disgraced uncle Andrew tried to talk to him at the Duchess of Kent’s funeral last September.

The visibly uncomfortable interaction resulted in a ‘wary poker face’ from William, Ms James noted. 

His ‘scarf behaviour’ seems to be a ‘polite’ tactic to manage any ‘social trickiness’, she continued.

It is understood that the King wishes to look out for Beatrice and Eugenie, but William might have a different perspective on their position within the family, in light of the new facts that have emerged within the Epstein Files. 

Perhaps one of the most shocking details about Beatrice was that the princess helped advise her mother after Ferguson said she ‘abhors paedophilia’ while calling her decision to accept £15,000 to pay off her debts a ‘gigantic error of judgement’. 

Speaking to The Standard in 2011, Fergie said: ‘I personally, on behalf of myself, deeply regret that Jeffrey Epstein became involved in any way with me.

‘I abhor paedophilia and any sexual abuse of children and know that this was a gigantic error of judgment on my behalf.’  

‘I am just so contrite I cannot say. Whenever I can, I will repay the money and will have nothing ever to do with Jeffrey Epstein ever again,’ she told the paper’s former editor Geordie Greig. 

In an email that was among the three million documents released by the US Department of Justice last month, Ferguson claimed her eldest daughter, then 22, agreed with her that it was ‘important’ to brief the press that Epstein had already ‘done his penance’ in prison. 

Fergie said Beatrice was present when she called a journalist in April 2011 to say it was ‘wrong’ to call Epstein a sex offender because he was now ‘moving on with his life’.

He was released from Palm Beach County Penitentiary in September 2009 after serving 13 months of an 18-month sentence.

She said she planned to tell the press: ‘He [Epstein] was sent to prison for sexual offending, but that he had done his penance and was out of jail.’

And revealing her daughter’s support, she said: ‘Beatrice and I had a discussion and we agreed it was important.’

Fergie also tried desperately to find her way back into the paedophile’s good graces as she fawned over her ‘supreme friend’ in grovelling emails to Epstein, it emerged last September. 

In an email leaked to The Mail on Sunday, the ex-duchess ‘humbly apologised’ and told the sex trafficker she knew he was feeling ‘hellaciously let down by me’ after the interview. 

She also discussed how to restore his reputation with Beatrice, two years after they travelled to Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion with Eugenie.

While they previously seemed to be bystanders caught up in their parents’ relationship with Epstein, it now seems that Beatrice – according to Fergie – at least took a more active role.  

Earlier this month, sources close to the sisters said they were ‘appalled’ and ’embarrassed’ by a photo of Andrew crouching over an unidentified woman lying on the floor in the newly released files. 

They are believed to be ‘aghast’ at their mother’s sycophantic emails, calling Epstein a ‘legend’ and proposing marriage to him, and Eugenie must surely have been left mortified after her mother told the sex offender she was off on a ‘s***ging weekend’. 

A source close to Eugenie and Beatrice told the Daily Mail: ‘They are aghast at what they have read. They are mortified by the emails their mother has sent to Epstein. It is so embarrassing for them.’

They added: ‘We don’t believe the girls [Beatrice and Eugenie] were told much about what has just emerged [in the latest Epstein files release], and they will simply be aghast at just how close their parents were to this appalling man.’

A royal insider claimed earlier this month that while Beatrice and Eugenie have matured into ‘intelligent, polite women’ – their ‘rarefied’ upbringing taught them to be ‘just as entitled as their parents’.

‘They were never going to be working royals but have benefitted from their family connection. Andrew introduced them to many of his business contacts and foreign royals. They and Fergie have become friends with some shady people’, the source claimed.

‘Beatrice and Eugenie grew up in this rarefied world in which there was always someone to do everything for you. That was illustrated when Beatrice had her BMW stolen in 2009 after leaving it unlocked with the car keys in the ignition. I think she was used to her police protection officer looking after such things.

‘Whether you believe it was their decision [to not be working royals] or it was them and their father putting a brave face on things, he and they said they wanted careers instead of a life of ribbon-cutting. Andrew maintained it was their decision.’