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Just hours before announcing the happy news that they were expecting their third baby together, Princess Eugenie and her marketing exec husband Jack Brooksbank were pictured in London’s trendy Notting Hill.
The couple, who have been married almost eight years and have two children – August and Ernest – together, beamed as they enjoyed a date night at a Michelin-starred eatery in May.
A body language expert later noted the princess looked “especially cheerful” when walking next to her “equally over-smiling ex”.
But now a royal expert has given a candid insight into what’s going on behind the scenes for the pregnant princess and her husband – while revealing the current status between Eugenie and her disgraced parents Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson.
Andrew Lownie, author of the number one bestseller Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, tells Woman’s Day that Eugenie has “never been as close” to her parents as her sister Beatrice is.
“She’s more of her own person. Beatrice is very much under the sort of thrall of Sarah Ferguson, and she’s the older, more responsible one in the middle,” Lownie shares, adding that Eugenie, meanwhile, “does her own thing”.
As such, Lownie explains that he doesn’t think Andrew is in touch with his youngest daughter – even as the birth of his fifth grandchild approaches.
“I think [Eugenie’s] pretty appalled [by the allegations against Andrew]. I know her husband’s family are pretty appalled, I mean they come from quite a respectable family, and they kind of feel their son married beneath them with the Yorks,” the author claims. “I think she wants to go off and do her own thing.”
Lownie goes as far as to call the relationship between Eugenie and her father as “very fractured”, and also raises questions about how much contact remains between the formerly amicable exes Andrew and Fergie.
“I don’t know how much contact there is between Fergie and Andrew. I mean, clearly she passed on the news about the baby, but that’s about it,” the author says.
Lownie is known for delving deep into the lives of the York family. The author’s bestselling book has recently been updated with new material which touches on the fallout of claims made in the Epstein Files.
Speaking previously to Woman’s Day, Lownie mused about how if Beatrice and Eugenie “were sensible” they would “just cut themselves loose” from the Royal Family.
“They would say, ‘I’m giving up my title and just going to concentrate on my family and my career, but their career is all based on being a princess. It’s all client relations, it’s all about bringing in people that they meet through their royal connections.”
Andrew Lownie’s book, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York has been updated with sensational new material and is available for purchase now.
