Prince Andrew in Talks to Leave Royal Lodge

Prince Andrew is in advanced talks with King Charles’s senior aides and representatives to voluntarily leave the 30‑room Royal Lodge amid mounting pressure over a long-running “peppercorn” rent arrangement and renewed scrutiny of his ties to Jeffrey Epstein following Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs. Buckingham Palace is said to be “cranking up the pressure” even though Andrew cannot be legally evicted because a cast‑iron lease runs until 2078. The Public Accounts Committee reported that Andrew paid about £1m for the 2003 lease and funded roughly £7.5m of refurbishments while effectively paying a nominal annual rent, and it is writing to the Crown Estate and the Treasury. The row has had visible consequences — Andrew gave up remaining titles, his coat of arms was removed from Windsor Castle, and there have been daily discussions within the royal household about his future at the estate. Andrew has resisted moving, but sources say his departure increasingly appears inevitable amid unresolved questions about where he and Sarah Ferguson would relocate and what financial settlement might be reached, while Buckingham Palace declined to comment and Downing Street said MPs will not be given parliamentary time to debate the matter.