RICHARD EDEN: What friends of Prince Andrew tell me could be the REAL reason Charles is trying to evict him from Royal Lodge (and it’s nothing to do with the Epstein scandal)

King Charles loathes confrontation so there was some surprise when he – or those close to him, perhaps – declared war on younger brother Prince Andrew in the usually staid pages of The Times.

There is, according to the newspaper, an ‘increasingly bitter stand-off’ between the Monarch and the Duke of York over the fate of Royal Lodge, which has been Andrew’s family home since he paid £1million for a 75-year lease in 2003.

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Andrew, who shares it with his ex-wife, Sarah, Duchess of York, spent more than £7.5million on extensive renovation work to the sprawling Grade II-listed mansion in Windsor Great Park.

Prince Andrew rides out in Windsor grounds last week
Prince Andrew rides out in Windsor grounds last week
Andrew has spent more than £7.5million on extensive renovation work to the sprawling Grade II-listed mansion in Windsor Great Park
Andrew has spent more than £7.5million on extensive renovation work to the sprawling Grade II-listed mansion in Windsor Great Park
However, the King is said to have made it clear that he wants Andrew to move out and live elsewhere.

Under the headline, ‘Location! Location! Eviction?’, The Times reported that Andrew is ‘refusing to budge, much to the frustration of his brother’.

Describing the ‘battle of wills’, a source was quoted saying, somewhat menacingly, that, ‘If he doesn’t agree to move to a property better suited to his needs, then the King may have to reconsider the levels of support he is willing to provide.’

What was missing from the report, however, was any sense of why the King is apparently so keen to evict his brother from his home of two decades.

READ MORE: RICHARD EDEN: The real reason that King Charles won’t see Harry, as revealed to me by Palace insiders

Money can hardly be a motivation, given His Majesty’s great wealth.

The article suggested that Royal Lodge, which is owned by the independent Crown Estate, could be let to a private tenant instead.

Yet a National Audit Office report of 2005 made it clear this could not happen, ‘because of the sensitive location of the property in the centre of the Windsor Great Park with its consequential management considerations, and because of security concerns surrounding the Royal Family’s access to the Royal Chapel’.

The Royal Chapel of All Saints – where Andrew’s daughter Princess Beatrice married Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi in 2020 – sits in the grounds of Royal Lodge.

The Crown Estate, meanwhile, took the view that it would be appropriate were the property to remain under the occupancy of the Royal Family. According to my sources, that position hasn’t changed.

There has been some suggestion, it is true, that the Prince and Princess of Wales and their three children could move into 30-room Royal Lodge.

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The Waleses currently live in four-bedroom Adelaide Cottage at Windsor.

However, a source close to William and Catherine tells me they are very happy there and have no wish to leave. In due course, they will occupy Windsor Castle.

‘The last thing William and Catherine would want is a load of controversy about their getting another big house,’ says a friend.

‘They already have their large home at Kensington Palace and their Norfolk property, Anmer Hall, in addition to Adelaide Cottage. There was a fair bit of criticism of the cost of renovations to their Kensington Palace home and they would not want to go through all that again.’

More than one friend of the Yorks has suggested: could it be that the King sees Royal Lodge as a potential future home for Queen Camilla?
More than one friend of the Yorks has suggested: could it be that the King sees Royal Lodge as a potential future home for Queen Camilla?
What, then, is the real reason behind the King’s determination to evict Andrew and Fergie, who – like Charles and the Princess of Wales – has been through a recent cancer battle?

More than one friend of the Yorks has suggested the same intriguing answer to me: could it be that the King sees Royal Lodge as a potential future home for Queen Camilla?

Like anyone who has been seriously ill, the King is said to have been thinking about every possible contingency. Who wouldn’t?

He will know that, were his wife to outlive him, she would be left with a somewhat uncertain status.

As dowager Queen, Camilla would be stepmother – not mother – to King William. And William will inherit everything, just as Charles did from his mother, including Clarence House, where Charles and Camilla live when they are in London. As Prince of Wales, William already owns the King’s beloved Gloucestershire home, Highgrove.

Andrew and Charles attend a Service of Thanksgiving to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012
Andrew and Charles attend a Service of Thanksgiving to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012
So, Charles will be determined to make sure that Camilla is kept in the manner to which she has become accustomed. Might that include guaranteeing her a ‘country’ bolthole in Windsor Great Park?

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Even before he ascended the throne, Charles made great efforts to give her the status he felt she deserved.

Seven months before Queen Elizabeth’s death, the late Queen announced that she wanted Camilla, then the Duchess of Cornwall, to be known as Queen Consort when Prince Charles became King. Few can have doubted the influence of Charles in that decision, which contradicted a statement from Clarence House when Camilla married Charles in 2005 that she would in future be known as Princess Consort, such was the sensitivity around the thorny subject.

Although Queen Camilla owns her own country home, Ray Mill House in Wiltshire, it is hard to imagine her ever retreating completely from royal life.

Where better to continue to live like a queen than at Royal Lodge – the Queen Mother’s beloved home until her death in 2002?