An opinion poll of royal popularity has shown a dramatic shift against Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. Until now, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's daughters have been impervious to their father's fall from grace. Even as Andrew's friendship with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein led to 92% of people having a negative opinion of the former prince (and a hard core of 2% having a positive one), Beatrice, 37, and Eugenie 36, had always attracted more positive opinions than negative ones. Support for them remained constant and even showed occasional increases, perhaps in sympathy for their family difficulties.
This is no longer the case. YouGov's poll this week showed an abrupt reversal of fortunes as Beatrice's popularity went from a rating of +13 in January (when 37% of people liked her while 24% disliked her) to -4. Eugenie suffered similarly, falling from +12 to -5, showing that there is no more sympathy for her despite the announcement that she is pregnant with her third child.
This kind of fall in popularity in such a short space of time has only happened twice before: when Andrew gave his disastrous interview with Newsnight and when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced that they were stepping down from royal duties. It shows that Andrew's arrest and the severing of ties between the princesses and their charities cut through in a way that other headlines about him did not. Andrew has always denied any wrongdoing. It may not have helped that a National Audit Office report in June highlighted how the King pays for the princesses' London homes at St James's Palace and Kensington Palace even though they are not working members of the royal family. Do you think that they deserve sympathy?
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