King Charles is said to be drawing a line this Christmas, and it’s between the royal festivities and his scandal-embroiled brother and ex-sister-in-law.
According to a Sunday Times report, the monarch will exclude Prince Andrew and Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson from this year’s Sandringham celebrations, aiming to keep them as “invisible” as possible amid renewed scrutiny over their ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
An insider told the outlet, “You can’t sack someone from being your brother. But this year, if the duke and duchess were both to be as honorable [as last year], it would be very much for the best and the family would not be disappointed, not least to avoid the King having to make any more difficult decisions.”
Last Christmas, Andrew and Fergie quietly stayed at their Windsor home, Royal Lodge, while King Charles and others gathered at Sandringham.
The timing of this exclusion is no coincidence. Freshly leaked emails have reignited questions over Andrew’s and Fergie’s relationship with Epstein.
In one email allegedly sent by Andrew in 2011 —just a day after a now-infamous photo of him with Virginia Giuffre went public— he wrote:
“We are in this together … keep in close touch, and we’ll play some more soon!!!!”
Fergie, meanwhile, is under fire for a separate 2011 email in which she reportedly apologized to Epstein despite previously condemning him. In the message, she called him a “steadfast, generous and supreme friend.”
She had publicly confessed to a “terrible, terrible error of judgment” earlier that year when admitting to accepting nearly £15,000 from Epstein.
Her spokesman, however, now insists the email was part of a strategy to “assuage Epstein and his threats” after he allegedly threatened legal action.
The consequences were swift: multiple charities dropped her as a patron, including Julia’s House, the British Heart Foundation, Teenage Cancer Trust, and others.
Insiders suggest that King Charles is not seeking to ban Andrew and Fergie entirely from the royal fold. He reportedly isn’t opposed to them attending church services or funerals, but wants them to enter and exit discreetly, avoiding public fanfare.
As one source put it to The Sunday Times, “The King is not of the mind to banish someone worshipping at church or attending family occasions like a funeral. But he would hope they would find a more discreet way of attending these events.”
That said, Andrew doesn’t always seem to gravitate toward stealth. The Sunday Times reported that “in the Duke of York’s case, he seems to relish the prospect of not being low-key about it.”
From Charles’s perspective, cutting Andrew off entirely is impossible, after all, “you can’t sack someone from being your brother.”
But by distancing and minimizing their public presence, the King may aim to save face for the monarchy without engaging in the dramatic spectacle of a formal ban.
That means 2025 could see a Christmas at Sandringham without the Duke and Duchess of York’s familiar faces.
