‘These girls endured the tabloid humiliation of their mother's toes being sucked’

Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie both have rich husbands with good prospects, so why do they both reside in grace-and-favour Crown Estate properties?

- Tessa Dunlop

Apparently, the former Duke of York’s daughters will keep their royal titles. Hardly headline news; until yesterday, you might not have been aware they even had titles. To be honest, I’ve always struggled to remember which sister is which (if it helps, to look at Beatrice is to see a mashup between Fergie and Queen Victoria, and Eugenie is the spit of her father.) Still confused? No matter, for the moment at least, the convenient shorthand HRH Princess applies to both. In his slimmed-down-monarchy phase, Charles, the then Prince of Wales, suggested that the girls might relinquish their royal status, but Andrew dug in (he likes titles).

Depending on your age, you might recall that these are the same girls who, as young children, endured the tabloid humiliation of their mother’s toes being sucked (or was it licked?) by a Texan financier. Prince Philip’s verdict on his unedifying daughter-in-law was “odd and pointless”; in contrast, the late Queen commended her parenting style (ahem) and post-separation smuggled Fergie into Balmoral when Philip was at Cowes.

So far, so very odd, and we haven’t even got onto Andrew and that pizza in Woking with daughters who were “just a little younger” than Epstein’s victim, Virginia Giuffre. According to the latter's searing memoir, Nobody's Girl, that is how Andrew knew Virginia was 17. Dads and daughters, eh? Nothing like weaponising your nearest and dearest. Makes having Fergie as a mum look like a walk in the park.