Prince Andrew hasn't had many reasons to smile lately, but it seems his luck may have changed. Threatened with eviction from his palatial Windsor home, the beleaguered royal has reportedly won a 'stay of execution' from his brother, King Charles. In a deal thrashed out between the pair at Balmoral in August, the king will allow the Duke to stay on "indefinitely," as long as he can fund the major repair works needed at Royal Lodge. However, palace insiders have serious doubts the problem prince will be able to stay on much longer at his country pile. Click or scroll on to find out more...

During their private Balmoral meeting, the king agreed to give Andrew more time to prove he can finance the extensive repairs needed at his seven-bedroom home, including widespread damp, which will cost an estimated £2 million ($2.4m), The Mirror reports. However, after his £249,000 ($303k) annual allowance was cut following his links to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, one family friend told the Daily Mail that the prince was living in "cloud cuckoo-land." "No one, not least His Majesty, believes there is any realistic, long-term chance of the Duke of York being able to keep the roof at Royal Lodge over his head," they added. Another observed that Andrew and Sarah, his ex-wife whom he still lives with, are "rattling around in a huge property they simply can't afford." How he'll afford to stay on is yet to be revealed, but as one insider remarked: "The Duke is clearly not going without a fight. This will all probably end in tears. Mostly likely his."

Since the death of his mother and his brother's ascension to the throne, not to mention explosive sexual assault accusations, Prince Andrew's fortunes have floundered significantly. In a bid to create a “slimmed-down” monarchy, King Charles reportedly slashed the annual grant Prince Andrew used to receive from the Queen. Andrew has also been banned from his suite of rooms at Buckingham Palace, which he had used as a London base, and according to sources, King Charles is keen to evict him from Royal Lodge. While he has been offered alternative lodgings at Frogmore Cottage after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were given their marching orders, the Prince is said to be refusing to budge.

Royal Lodge has reportedly been earmarked for the Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Kate. However, according to sources, the power to evict the Duke does not lie with King Charles. Prince Andrew's lease on the house, which is in his name and still has more than 80 years left, is an agreement between him and the Crown Estate. Therefore the matter of ending the lease early before it expires would reportedly be a decision for the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is currently Jeremy Hunt. Otherwise, the Duke must agree to leave willingly. 

Following the mastectomy Sarah Ferguson underwent in June after a breast cancer diagnosis, the rumoured plan to move Prince Andrew into Frogmore Cottage was reportedly "quietly shelved" as she recovered at home. Fergie has previously sidestepped the question of whether she and her ex-husband – and current housemate – would downsize to Frogmore, telling Hello! in March that it was "a matter for the Duke and His Majesty". However, she let slip an interesting insight into the York dynamics. "For many years now... I've really pushed to... contribute to the York family life. Recently they have been saying that it’s unfair of Andrew to ask this or to ask that. Well, since he stepped back [from royal duties] he doesn't actually take taxpayers' money. And I'm in a position where I can support him and the rest of the family through my work." Whether she earns enough to cover the £2 million ($2.4m) repairs needed at Royal Lodge remains to be seen.

In another twist to this royal saga, it was revealed that Prince Andrew's future at Royal Lodge may actually rest in the hands of his nephew, Prince William, and not King Charles. According to royal expert Robert Jobson, who spoke to Daily Express US in August, the monarch won't be able to kick Andrew out of his home without the help of William – and that doesn't look likely to happen any time soon. While Jobson doesn't think the issue will "go away in the long term", Andrew is "pretty much secure" for now as "the only person that can really force him out will probably be William." The Prince of Wales and his family currently have the use of Anmer Hall in Norfolk, Kensington Palace, which "cost a small fortune" to renovate, and also Adelaide Cottage at Windsor. "If you're going to have three houses, you don't make a big noise and say I want a grander place. So I think at the moment, he's just pretty secure in where he wants to be."

The royal's recent personal woes come in the wake of a rocky few years. Having served in the Royal Navy for more than two decades and represented Britain on numerous official visits abroad, Prince Andrew withdrew from public life for good in 2020. The move came after his disastrous 2019 interview on BBC's Newsnight, where he spoke for the first time about his relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and the allegations brought against him. Following the interview, he was stripped of his military honours and royal patronages. In 2022, he went on to settle a sexual abuse lawsuit for a reported £3 million ($3.7m), which was brought by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre. 

In an effort to remove Prince Andrew from focus, he was excluded from any formal role in the ceremony or procession at the coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla on 6 May. However, the Prince, who is eighth in line to the throne, was allowed to wear his ceremonial Knight of the Garter robes at the last minute. It was reported that he was also booed by members of the public on his way to the ceremony. After the coronation, sources close to Prince Andrew told The Independent the disgraced royal was "concerned that now the coronation is over, the knives are out. He's worried that the royals might even turn off the utilities to get him out of [Royal Lodge]." The Duke was said to be "reluctant to leave" his home while it underwent renovations and roof repairs, which cost him £200,000 ($243k) this summer, for fear his absence would be made permanent, The Times reported. 

Remarkably, Jobson revealed that Charles and Andrew – seen here in happier times with their then-wives Princess Diana and the Duchess of York – still have a "reasonable" personal relationship. He explained: "Charles has got two hats he wears – one is a brother, one is a king. As a brother, he has no animosity towards his brother... he had them all over Christmas." However, a friend of duke revealed there had been a more recent "cooling of relations" between the brothers, The Times reported in October. As a king, Jobson added, Charles must "look at the long term and what is good, and unfortunately, anything associated with Andrew is not good". 

However, Andrew hasn't been frozen out completely. He was invited to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Queen’s death at Balmoral Castle on 8 September, along with the rest of the royal family  all except the Sussexes, who reportedly received no contact about the event. The Sussex snub triggered outrage among some royal fans, who thought it unfair that the widely publicly disgraced Andrew should be invited to the memorial when Harry and Meghan were not.

While the family may have extended Andrew the hand of welcome, a recent poll has revealed that he is the nation’s ‘least favourite’ royal. Nearly 80% of the public have expressed the opinion that the disgraced Duke should receive no public funding and that he should be removed from the line of succession – that’s an even further fall in the public estimation than Harry and Meghan have faced.

The public are also adamant in their view that Charles should not allow Andrew to return to any royal duties. Indeed, according to The Daily Mirror’s Royal Editor, Russell Myers, it would be "very foolhardy" for Andrew to try to return to public life. "I don’t think people would appreciate it," Myers told Sky News.

It has also recently been revealed that government documents concerning Prince Andrew will not be released during his lifetime, sparking a further flurry of intrigue around the documents’ contents. The decision that all of Andrew’s correspondence, including details of dealings as a trade ambassador, will be kept secret until 2065 comes in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request made to the Foreign Office, The Daily Mail has reported.

In spite of Charles’ best efforts to evict them, Andrew and Sarah continue to reside in their long-term home. The pair also share the Lodge with a couple of fury flatmates, the late Queen’s corgis, which they adopted after her passing. According to Fergie’s recent Instagram post commemorating the anniversary of the Queen’s death, Sandy and Muick are still “thriving”.

Read on to discover the story of how Prince Andrew went from the Queen's 'favourite' to the black sheep of the family, and all the palaces he has lived in along the way...

Born at Buckingham Palace on 19 February 1960, there's a 10-year age gap between Prince Andrew and his eldest brother, King Charles. The young Prince is seen here in June 1961 with his mother Queen Elizabeth II on the balcony of the palace following the Trooping the Colour parade. Incredibly, he was the first child to be born to a reigning monarch for 103 years.

The official home of the British monarch since 1837, Buckingham Palace was first and foremost a family home for Prince Andrew. He was born in the Belgian Suite, named after King Leopold l of the Belgians, which was occupied by the late Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in the early days of her reign. It is also where President Obama and the First Lady stayed during their visit in 2011.

Prince Andrew was christened in the palace Music Room on 8 April 1960. It’s a popular spot for royal christenings – King Charles and Prince William were both baptised here with water brought from the River Jordan. Originally known as the Bow Drawing Room, the Music Room was completed in 1831 and has not been changed since. The room is also used as a space where guests can be presented to the monarch before dinner. 

Only opened to the public in 1993, Prince Andrew had free rein to explore Buckingham Palace as a child, including its 775 rooms, which include 19 state rooms, 52 royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices and 78 bathrooms, along with architect John Nash’s gilded Grand Staircase. In total, the palace has an eye-watering 760 windows and 1,514 doors, as well as its own post office, cinema and ATM machine, installed by Coutts, the royals' bank of choice.

Although Prince Andrew would not have used the state apartments every day, he would have undoubtedly enjoyed tearing through some of the grander rooms when visitors had gone home, not least The White Drawing Room, with its lavish gilded furniture that puts Trump Tower to shame. The space has the added attraction of a secret door, disguised as a mirror cabinet, through which the late Queen used to enter from her private apartments.

It is not hard to imagine the young Prince playing kings and queens with his friends in the Throne Room, seen here, which was also designed by John Nash. The focal point of the room is a pair of throne chairs known as the Chairs of Estate, which were used for the Queen’s Coronation ceremony in 1953. The chairs were restored and used at various points during the King’s coronation on 6 May 2023.

Although he left the palace behind when he attended boarding school as a teenager and later joined the Royal Navy, Prince Andrew still maintained a suite of rooms at Buckingham Palace. He's said to have been especially meticulous about how the suite was arranged. For example, his extensive collection of 72 teddy bears reportedly had to be organised in a very particular way on his bed. According to Charlotte Briggs, a former staff member for the royal household in the 1990s, it was of the utmost importance: “As soon as I got the job, I was told about the teddies and it was drilled into me how he wanted them... I even had a day’s training," she told The Sun.

However, Prince Andrew was purportedly banned from using his suite at the palace by the new King in January 2023, following the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. The Prince is reported to have reached an out-of-court settlement with Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of sexual assault. The settlement stopped the case from going to trial in February 2023, though the Prince has always maintained his innocence.

Buckingham Palace was also the scene of the Prince's infamous interview. He must bitterly regret his decision to invite Newsnight inside the palace gates in November 2019. The royal faced a backlash from his appearance on the TV show, where some viewers said he showed no concern for Epstein’s victims. In response to accusations of sexual abuse, he said that Virginia Giuffre’s claim that he was sweaty in a nightclub was untrue because an “overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War” had left him unable to sweat. Days later, his greatest champion, his mother the Queen, was forced to insist that he step back from public life "for the foreseeable future".

Nobody would have ever expected such a fall from grace for the popular young Prince. He was sent to the notoriously strict Scottish boarding school Gordonstoun aged 13. He proved himself quite the action man on the sports field during his time there, as well as obtaining three A-levels before graduating in 1979. His experience at the spartan school was in sharp contrast to that of his elder brother, King Charles, who famously described Gordonstoun as “Colditz in kilts”.

Prince Andrew will recall many happy summers spent at Balmoral with his family when he was growing up. The Scottish Baronial-style castle, which sits in 50,000 acres of wild Highlands countryside, has been a royal residence since 1852. Over the centuries, it's been a playground for generations of royal children, where they can run free and indulge in outdoor pursuits. 

Visiting the late Queen at Balmoral was a tradition that continued right up until the monarch’s death, with Prince Andrew spending significant time at the estate during the summer of 2022, before the late monarch passed away there on 8 September of the same year. According to reports, the Duke recently offered to manage the royal estates, including Balmoral, as part of a move to become more relevant, but has been told that “there is no chance of that happening”.

Christmas for Prince Andrew has traditionally been celebrated at Sandringham House in Norfolk, which, like Balmoral, is privately owned by the royal family. The late Queen would typically stay until February 6, the date of her father King George VI’s death and her ascension to the throne. The house dates to Elizabethan times and was snapped up by Queen Victoria in 1862 as a gift for her son, the future King Edward VII.

A nine-year-old Prince Andrew seems to be trying out one of his Christmas presents in the drawing room at Sandringham House while his brother Charles examines the box. Although Prince Andrew has always stayed at the main house in the past, in the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, he reportedly resided at Wood Farm Cottage in 2022, a property on the estate used by Prince Philip during his retirement.

Following in his father’s footsteps, Prince Andrew joined the Navy in 1979 and is seen in the background here, aged 19, at the Britannia Royal Naval College in the charming Devon town of Dartmouth. He completed a two-year training course and became a helicopter pilot before graduating in 1980 in the presence of his mother, the Queen, who inspected the passing out parade (which included her son). 

Dubbed "Randy Andy" due to his fondness for the ladies, Prince Andrew returned to a hero’s welcome in 1982 after a stint serving as a decoy helicopter pilot during the Falklands War. As a "spare" heir, he could afford to be more adventurous. He was a popular royal figure and became romantically involved with American actress Koo Stark when he was 21. The pair went their separate ways in 1982, after Stark appeared in a controversial 'art-house fllm' that was deemed 'racy' at the time.

A few years later, Andrew married the relatively down-to-earth Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey in July 1986, whom the palace reportedly deemed a breath of fresh air after Andrew’s long list of unsuitable girlfriends. They are seen here on the balcony at Buckingham Palace. They received the title of Duke and Duchess of York and had two daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie. The couple divorced 10 years later in May 1996, yet remain friends. 

Upon their marriage, the late Queen gifted the couple a 665-acre parcel of land on the Sunninghill Park Estate in Berkshire, which they set about developing into a swish 12-bedroom mansion, featuring grand reception rooms, stables and a swimming pool. Construction work on the property began in 1987 and the couple took up residence in the new build in 1990.

The property was dubbed "Southyork" and the "Dallas Palace", due to its uncanny resemblance to the ranch house in the 80s US soap opera of the same name. Other commentators likened it to an out-of-town Tesco supermarket, while the ever-diplomatic late Duke of Edinburgh reportedly described Sunninghill Park as looking like “a tart’s bedroom”.

Designed by Sir James Dunbar-Nasmith, who also created a development on the Queen’s Balmoral estate, Sunninghill was built to accommodate the couple’s growing family in style. Princess Beatrice, who was born in August 1988, was just two when the family moved in, while for her sister Eugenie, it was the only home she knew until she was 16 years old.

Although Andrew and Fergie divorced in 1996, the couple continued to live under the same roof with their two daughters. Following the Queen Mother's death in 2002, the Duke decamped to the Royal Lodge in Windsor, her former residence, and Sunninghill Park was put on the market. The Duchess and their daughters followed in 2006, leaving the property vacant. 

The property fell into disrepair after Sarah and the two princesses moved out, but some photographs taken in the mansion in 2008 give us an idea of how the home once looked. The pair might be pleased they moved on, however, as the plot where the house stood is now under the Heathrow Airport flight path, with aeroplanes passing over every few minutes. Let’s take a closer look at what the home looked like…

In this formal drawing room, which has featured as a backdrop in several magazine interview spreads over the years, an elegant carved marble fireplace is flanked by two enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, swathed in reams of gold-tasselled brocade. It was once furnished with gilded furniture and overstuffed sofas, with paintings from The Royal Collection adorning its walls. Pictured here after the home was abandoned by the family, it looks like a shell of its former heyday.

By contrast, this room has a much cosier feel, with its deep blue walls and bold floral motif on the carpet. It came as a surprise when the property sold in 2007 for £15 million ($18.7m), £3 million ($3.7m) over the asking price and the equivalent of £23.6 million ($29.4m) today, in a deal viewed by some as suspect. It was later reported that the Duke had been allegedly acting as a fixer for the buyer, Mr Kulibayev, in his business deals. According to Tatler, Prince Andrew had enjoyed goose-hunting trips with his father-in-law, former president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazabayev. The Duke denied any impropriety. 

Having lain derelict for many years, Kulibayev demolished the Duke's old mansion and its replacement building is said to be nearing completion. However, the sale is still under scrutiny, with MPs in 2022 suggesting it could be an example of “dirty” Kazakh money finding its way into Britain while Andrew was working as a trade envoy for the UK, reported The Sun. No wrongdoing has ever been established and Andrew stepped down as trade envoy in 2011 following criticism of his former friendship with convicted paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein.

For the past 21 years, Prince Andrew has called the Royal Lodge home. The 30-room Windsor manse, located just a few miles from Windsor Castle, was formerly the residence of the Queen Mother and where the late Queen Elizabeth II spent many weekends growing up. Prince Andrew reportedly signed a 75-year lease for the Georgian property in 2003 and is said to have spent £7.5 million ($9.3m) in refurbishments, as well as putting down an initial £1 million ($1.2m) payment to secure the lease and paying a weekly rent of £250 ($312).

New additions to the property included an indoor swimming pool and it also boasts a private chapel and eight additional properties for staff and guests. However, recent reports suggest that Andrew is being effectively "evicted" from the residence, as he will be unable to afford its upkeep following the King’s decision to slash the annual £249,000 ($310k) grant he used to receive from the late Queen.

The Prince still lives with his ex-wife at the £30 million ($37m) property, more than 27 years after their divorce, and is reluctant to leave. His family have called the mansion home for over two decades and Princess Eugenie loves it so much she chose to hold her wedding reception there in 2018. But in the wake of the King's coronation, more pressure has reportedly been placed on the Prince to move. According to sources close to Prince Andrew: "He's worried that the royals might even turn off the utilities to get him out of there." 

In a further twist, it was revealed in March 2023 that the King had asked Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to leave Frogmore Cottage, the Windsor home the couple leased following their wedding in 2018. With the couple's pending departure, the cottage has reportedly been offered to Prince Andrew instead, though he's said to be reluctant to downsize to the five-bedroom home. All signs suggest change may be on the horizon though, as it was recently reported that Fergie bought a £5 million ($6.2m) mews house in Belgravia as an “investment property".

Back in 2014, Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson snapped up a holiday home near the slopes of Verbier in Switzerland. The seven-bedroom Chalet Helora is a luxury escape with breathtaking views of the Swiss Alps. However, facing large legal bills over the sexual assault lawsuit brought by Virginia Guiffre in 2021, the Prince decided to part with the chalet in 2022 for a reported £19 million ($23.7m). It's believed to have been sold to a British financier, but the transaction did not leave the Prince flush with funds. 

According to The Mirror, the Prince still owed millions to the previous owner, Isabelle de Rouvre, who took legal action to try and recoup her money from the sale. According to de Rouvre, she is still owed £6.8 million ($8.5m) but agreed to a payment of £3.4 million ($4.2m) to settle the dispute. So there’ll be no sloping off for fun in the snow for Prince Andrew for the time being. 

As financial uncertainty and the threat of eviction loom over the Prince, he is reportedly laying low at his Windsor mansion and focusing on his private life. In January 2023, The Times reported that Prince Andrew had recruited a new communications team and had contacted lawyers with information that “will change people’s perceptions of him”. Judging from his exclusion from any formal roles at his brother's coronation, it may take more than that for the royal family to welcome him back into the fold...

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