Bad news for Prince Andrew shines light on Sussexes lost millions

A new report reveals the King spends more than $7 million a year on Prince Andrew, highlighting just what the Sussexes missed out on.

There are approximately 421,000 Brits that I would very much like to herd into a stadium, get out a megaphone and to let out a long, truly befuddled, existential ‘whyyyyyyyy?’ at.

These misguided souls are the one per cent of adults in the UK, according to the most recent YouGov survey, who have a very favourable view of human flotsam Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. Yes, “very”.

Therefore, today comes great news for these 421,000 truly deluded souls — Palace sources say the King, who is funding Andrew’s lavish life, could “reconsider the levels of support he is willing to provide”.

Andrew, the former trade ambassador who curiously has not travelled to any country with an extradition treaty to the US since his downfall, is still enjoying millions of dollars of royal funding every year.

Millions and millions of lovely, unearned, doing-absolutely-nothing-for dollars to spend on new putters and family-sized blocks of Dairy Milk and keeping at least one lawyer on a 24/7 retainer. (Well, I’m guessing.)

Britain's Prince Andrew, Duke of York, is running out of time at Royal Lodge. Picture: Justin Tallis / AFP

So, this Andrew money news came via The Times’ Kate Mansey who came up with the goods this weekend, revealing that King Charles seems to have reached the end of his tether over his brother’s intransigent refusal to trade his massive manor house Royal Lodge for the comparatively compact Frogmore Cottage. While the duke has a lease on the vast home with 50 years still left to run, under the terms, Andrew is meant to undertake repairs which he is not doing because he can’t afford them.

Shockingly, a 30-room, seven-bedroom grade II listed house set on 40 acres in the Windsor Great Park including landscaped grounds, a swimming pool with changing rooms, a tennis court and a golf practice area ain’t cheap to run or to keep ship-shape. And Andrew, a man who can probably not dine in a chi chi London restaurant without having an organic rye sourdough roll lobbed at his noggin, simply can’t bankroll it all.

At which point Mansey brought out new numbers that have never been reported before now.

It turns out that Charles currently spends about $5.7 million (£3 million) on Andrew’s security annually, with the duke having only lost his government-funded protection in 2022 along with paying his brother an allowance “thought to be well in excess of [$1.9 million] £1 million a year”.

Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. Picture: Daniel Leal / AFP

Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. Picture: Kola Sulaimon/AFP

To save you having to get out your abacuses, that means that since the late Queen died, the King has spent nearly $15 million or thereabouts on the former spare.

I’d love to really fulminate here for a good thousand words about how undeserving the Duke of Yuck is to get so much free money but we have bigger, Sussex-related fish to fry.

Because it is exactly this sort of regal munificence and not having to get up and do anything with the day but lay about on a fraying sofa that Harry and Meghan could be enjoying right now.

As we all know, in 2021, Harry told Oprah Winfrey, “my family literally cut me off financially, and I had to afford . . . afford security for us.”

Then, in October last year, came a new wrinkle in the tale via the independent outlet Byline Times which reported that up until about June 2020, that is months after the duke and duchess had relocated to Los Angeles, they had a £700,000 ($1.3 million) “funding deal” with King Charles, seemingly in addition to having their security costs taken care of.

(Byline reported that “the collapse of the ‘Sandringham Agreement’ governing a 12-month trial period” in 2020 “led directly” to the Sussexes having to foot the $5.7 million security bill suggesting that the royal family had been covering it up until then.)

That “funding deal” then fell apart in June 2020, per Byline, “in retaliation for the naming of a top royal aide in legal papers” as part of one of Harry’s court cases alleging phone hacking against The Sun.

Sarah Ferguson (L) and Britain's Prince Andrew, Duke of York. Picture: Hollie Adams / AFP

If we do the sums here, their “funding deal” plus their estimated security costs, also put at about $5.7 million (£3 million) would come to the value of about $7 million-a-year, an arrangement that Byline reports was in place in March 2020 when they took their irony-free “freedom flight” via $150 million private jet from Canada to Los Angeles.

My point is, Andrew and Harry, spare one and spare two, got very similar deals. The Sussexes, right this very minute, could be enjoying the fat of the royal land, so to speak. They would not have had to sign on with Netflix in September 2020 to make “content that informs but also gives hope’ and which they promised would ‘unlock action’ only to end up making lifestyle programming about horses and jam.

In this other timeline the duke and duchess would not have had to sign on with a speakers agency to theoretically earn money inspiring middle-management in Radisson ballrooms, to have to sign on with Spotify, to have to embarrassingly part ways with Spotify or to have to find therein own way means to come up with the estimated $6.6 million in living costs they now face.

You have to give it to Harry and Meghan: They really can stick to their principles even when said same principles cost them tens of millions of dollars.

King Charles has given Prince Andrew his marching orders.

I don’t know about you but it seems eminently unfair that Andrew is probably currently re-watching a Benny Hill VHS while eating Twiglets, essentially being rewarded for being a distasteful lump who happily hung out with a convicted sex offender and being so beyond-the-pale he can’t work, while the Sussexes have to be up and at ‘em to earn a crust.

The only good news I have here is that the duke’s days at his palatial digs would appear to be numbered. “The siege of Royal Lodge,” as Mansey reports it is being called by aides, could be coming to a head. As one friend of Charles told the Times: “Unfortunately, if Andrew refuses to leave within a reasonable time frame, then the King may be forced to reassess the whole package of support he provides…there are limits of patience and tolerance.”

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.