Reports that Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie have been banned from the Royal Ascot carriage procession raise an important question: what is the optimum fighting weight of the Royal Family?  For years now, we’ve been hearing about King Charles’s plans for a ‘slimmed down’ monarchy. Prince William, too, has declared that ‘change is on my agenda’ — which presumably means fewer floppy hats and chests stuck with improbable numbers of medals on the balcony at Buck House.  

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In the current torrid climate, few would demur that removing titles, cash and crash pads at Kensington Palace for the freeloading grifter elements of this extended family is a bad thing. But suddenly this slimmed down monarchy is looking a bit pinched. And not just too thin, but dangerously skinny. Less like when Bridget Jones finally managed to diet down to her ideal weight (8st 7lbs) and her friends told her she looked unhealthy — more Sharon and Kelly Osborne overdoing the Ozempic.

At a stroke, with the most recent dump of the Epstein files, Beatrice and Eugenie have been excised from the equation. As recently as last summer they were being touted as taking on bigger roles within ‘The Firm’. ‘Could Princess Beatrice and her sister, Princess Eugenie, become the new stars of the royal family?’ asked Tatler. Unfortunately, in common with most headlines that end with a question mark, the answer is ‘no’. 

Any hope that the sisters could escape the sins of their father, with his bad choices and boorish entitlement — or, for that matter, the mother and her embarrassing over-spending, sharing and eating — looked dicey following the publication of Andrew Lownie’s biography of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. It has now been extinguished altogether by their multiple mentions in the US Department of Justice files.  

Up to a point, the princesses could have argued that they were merely pawns in their parents’ sordid, money-grubbing endeavours — although they’ve stayed eerily quiet on the subject. Sure, the optics of having Epstein, Maxwell and Harvey Weinstein at Beatrice’s 18th birthday party didn’t look good, but she didn’t, presumably, invite them herself.  

But we now know, from the Department of Justice files that in July 2009, aged 19 and 21, Beatrice and Eugenie were taken by Sarah Ferguson to have lunch with Jeffrey Epstein in Florida — five days after he was released from prison for procuring a 14-year-old girl for prostitution. As adults by this stage, out in the world and presumably equipped by their expensive education to read newspapers and use internet search engines, this puts the sisters somewhere between useful idiots and bloody stupid. 

Eugenie’s picture and biography are still up on the website of the anti-slavery and human trafficking charity (Tasc) that she co-founded, but when her silence on Epstein is so deafening, you have to wonder for how much longer her patronage is desirable.  

Since Harry and Meghan flounced off to Montecito, there have been 11 working royals. But once you remove the ones whose place in The Firm you need to look up (Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, Duke of Kent, Princess Alexandra; all cousins, or married to cousins of the late Queen Elizabeth II — thank you, royal.uk!), and are also getting on a bit (the Duke of Kent is 90), that leaves just seven. The King, Queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales, Princess Anne and Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh.  

Royal biographer Hugo Vickers observed that ‘the King’s cancer diagnosis reminds us what a foolish idea a slimmed-down monarchy is’. In 2004, while both the King and Princess of Wales were undergoing cancer treatment, an accident — thought to have involved a horse — put Princess Anne in hospital with concussion for five days. This, said the royal writer Richard Kay at the time, was ‘the most compelling warning of the dangers of a slimmed-down monarchy’.   

Because the problem with a monarchy that has been slimmed down to such extremes that it’s verging on eating disorder territory is, you can’t bulk it back up so easily. It will be several years before the Prince and Princess of Wales’s children can be pressed into service and sent over the top. The eldest, Prince George, is only 12, despite his apparent fondness for wearing Jermyn Street tailoring to watch England play. (Prince William likes to claim that his children enjoy a ‘normal’ childhood, but I doubt George has ever had to be surgically removed from a hoodie or called his mother a cowbag for banning Roblox.)  

For the last time the monarchy’s BMI dropped so low it got close to flat-lining, you must go back to 1714, when the wretched Queen Anne died childless, despite 17 pregnancies and five live births. On this occasion, the royal family had to bring in some German workers — in a sort of Georgian fan fiction version of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. The closest Protestant heir was Anne’s second cousin, George. Elector of Hanover, 52nd in line to the throne.    

Such were the contortions considered necessary at the time — under the Act of Settlement — to keep the suspect left-footers out of the line of succession. With only two working royals under the age of 50, the discovery of a cache of Catholics, unsullied by links to rich weirdos, who could shake hands and cut ribbons would be as welcome right now as an apology from Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (who won’t, because he has, as we must say at this point, consistently denied any wrongdoing.) 

Otherwise, the slimline royal family might fade away altogether.  

© The Spectator