Princess Beatrice, the daughter of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, should leave the United Kingdom to stop her marriage to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi from crumbling under pressure from her father’s arrest by police investigating the Jeffrey Epstein files, according to a former British politician.
British newspapers have been openly speculating on whether Beatrice and her sister, Princess Eugenie, will survive the fallout from the Epstein scandal with their marriages intact. There is nothing concrete to indicate either relationship is actually failing, however.
“It seems to me that Beatrice has two choices,” former U.K. Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries wrote in a column for the Daily Mail. “The first is to make her marriage work and for that to happen, she should follow in the footsteps of her sister—Eugenie is based in Portugal with her husband Jack Brooksbank and their two sons—and leave the UK.
“Their daughters are young and if Edo’s business interests are mainly in the US, then that should be the destination. If the marriage is hard-going now, then it is only going to get trickier if they are apart for long periods.”
Why It Matters
Virginia Giuffre accused Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, of sexually assaulting her when she was a 17-year-old trafficking victim coerced by Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died by suicide in jail in 2019 while awaiting further charges. Mountbatten-Windsor has always denied the allegations and settled a lawsuit for an undisclosed sum while denying liability.
In February, Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested by Thames Valley Police in the United Kingdom on suspicion of misconduct in a public office following reports he leaked confidential government trade documents to Epstein. He has not commented since his arrest but has always denied Epstein-related wrongdoing.
Beatrice, Eugenie and the Epstein Files
King Charles III has made efforts to shield Beatrice and Eugenie from the impact of punitive action taken against their father, leaving the sisters with their princess titles even as Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his “Prince” and “Duke of York” titles.
However, speculation has been mounting in the British press about the impact of the scandal on their marriages, particularly after several awkward revelations from the Epstein files.
Among the files were messages appearing to show their mother, Sarah Ferguson, took them to see Epstein in New York while he was still under house arrest after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor. Epstein also asked Ferguson, nicknamed Fergie in Britain, to arrange for the princesses to give his friends a tour of Buckingham Palace, though on at least one occasion this did not actually go ahead because they were away.
Dorries’ Swipe at Beatrice’s Husband
Dorries took aim at Mozzi after he went on a business trip to the United States without Beatrice, who has been staying out of the limelight. Dorries pointed to “a flurry of snaps on Edo’s own Instagram feed that showed him living it up in the luxury hotspots of Palm Beach, Florida, on a business trip recently.”
“Like the flamingo pink suit and loafers he was wearing, it wasn’t a good look for the Italian aristocrat. Not when his wife—and mother of his two young daughters—is enduring the toughest time of her life,” she wrote.
“I wasn’t surprised though. I’ve had some experience of Edo myself. At a church service, I found Beatrice and Eugenie and their husbands seated behind me.
“Edo was laughing loudly and generally behaving like a disrespectful teenager so that, at one point, I turned round and gave him the evil eye that only a woman my age—and a mother—can bestow. To his credit, he got the message, pronto. But there was an arrogance there that smacked of immaturity.”
Newsweek reached out to Mozzi through his Banda property company for comment.
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