LONDON – Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson will attend their first royal event since their dramatic exile from public life when their granddaughter is christened on Friday, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The former Duke and Duchess of York will step inside a royal palace for the first time since they were stripped of their titles after fresh revelations about their relationships with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Princess Beatrice (37) and her property developer husband Edo Mapelli Mozzi (42) will bring close family and friends to the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace where their second daughter Athena – born several weeks prematurely in January – will be baptised.
One source said: ‘‘It’s going to be a royal occasion but everyone is dreading the thought of seeing Andrew there.’’ Beatrice is said to have remained close to her mother Sarah during the turbulence of the Epstein saga, but relations with her father are understood to be more strained.
An insider said: ‘‘Beatrice has of course invited her father. But things are not warm between them. However, she’s worried about him. He’s going through a low ebb with his mental health and she recognises that he dotes on his grandchildren and it would be cruel to deprive him of the chance to attend the christening.
‘‘Some careful conversations and diplomacy with King Charles will have taken place to get to this stage.’’
Andrew was stripped of all his royal titles in October after a leaked email published by the MoS proved he lied in his interview with BBC’s Newsnight when he claimed he ‘never had any contact’ with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein after they were pictured together in New York in December 2010.
This newspaper also revealed a gushing email that his ex-wife Sarah sent Epstein just weeks after publicly disowning him in which she called him a ‘steadfast, generous and supreme friend’.
It is thought Athena would have been christened earlier this year, had it not been for the painful scandal engulfing her grandparents. Her sister Sienna, now four, was baptised in 2022 within six months of her birth.
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