Inside Andrew’s Empty Royal Lodge: Exile Theories, Web Blunder, and Fergie’s Next Move

Reports paint Andrew’s days at Royal Lodge as late starts, war films, golf and Call of Duty on a wall-sized TV, with rare rides out and growing loneliness. Friends say Sarah Ferguson faces “nowhere to go, and no one to go with” if the Lodge era ends. A Scottish refuge offer at Carbisdale Castle has been withdrawn after threats; talk of “exile” to the Castle of Mey persists, though commentators say Frogmore or even Abu Dhabi is likelier. Then a tech hiccup: Andrew’s defunct website briefly reappeared — in Vietnamese — before redirect issues were fixed. Opinion writers argue his position is untenable and that the Firm’s survival relies on decisive action.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Calorogu Shark Media had Hello and welcome to Palace Intrigue.
I am your host. Mark Francis. Andrew's quiet life at
Royal Lodge appears to have slipped into what one newspaper
calls a state of arrested adolescence, with no official duties
and little to fill his days. The Duke reportedly rises late,

(00:26):
takes breakfast served by a staff, and retreats to a
cavernous sitting room where a massive television dominates the wall.
According to the Sun, he spends much of his time
there watching war films, golf, or playing video games, particularly
combat titles like Call of Duty. Royal author Ingrid Seward
recall a visitor's recent encounter. A friend of mine went

(00:47):
there to have a meeting with Fergie. The door was
opened by a butler and they went into a very
grand reception room, which was hung with beautiful paintings from
the royal collection, and there were fine carpets and furniture.
He and Fergie sat at a huge mahogany tape. The
butler served hot drinks, but there was no sign of
Andrew at all. But as he was about to leave,
Fergus said he must meet Andrew. The Prince was in

(01:07):
a huge sitting room. And Andrew was just lying there
on a massive sofa watching TV on the biggest screen
my friend had ever seen. It seemed to take up
the whole of a wall. It seemed to him that
their lives were quite separate. She was carrying on with
the business of doing business, and he was watching television.
His life is very empty, He's very lonely, and I
think he's probably extremely bored. I remember Fergie telling me

(01:29):
way back then that Andrew had always loved video games
and he's an aficionado television. Sources close to the household
say that Duke rarely leaves the windsor at State, venturing
out only twice a week for horse rides or occasionally
for shooting. Even then, Siward notes he's not a particularly
popular figure at the stables, adding that Andrew was wary
of photographers who linger nearby hoping for a lucrative picture.

(01:52):
His life is very empty, he's very lonely, and he's
probably extremely bored. Friends of Sarah Ferguson say she's in
an emotional limbo. Was the Royal Lodge saga nears its endgame,
claiming she has nowhere to go and no one to
go with. If she and Prince Andrew are finally forced
to move out, her future is hanging in the balance.

(02:12):
Reports say that she does not plan to continue to
live with Andrew following the Royal Lodge error. Lady Samantha Carbo'sdale,
the businesswoman and barrister who offered Prince Andrew refuge at
her Scottish estate, has now withdrawn the invitation after receiving
what she described as a wave of violent threats. Lady Samantha,
who owns the nineteen bedroom Carbosdale Castle in Sutherland, made

(02:35):
headlines last week when she publicly offered Andrew and Sarah
Ferguson a place to stay, suggesting her estate was more
fit to receive a prince. Amid reports the couple may
be evicted from Royal Lodge, but the backlash was swift
and intense. In a post on Facebook, she revealed she
had been subjected to abuse and intimidation following the offer.
Though she has now rescinded her invitation to Andrew, she

(02:57):
emphasized that the property remains at the disposal of the
Royal family should they ever require it. Leady Samantha was
a confirmed she has been in correspondence with King Charles,
keeping him updated on the ongoing restoration work at Carversdale Castle.
She said the King had followed her proposal with interest.
As the where will Andrew live speculation continues, one theory

(03:17):
suggests Charles may exile Andrew to the Castle of May
in the Scottish Highlands, complete with air resident donkey named
Alice for company. Sources suggest the castle, formerly the beloved
retreat of the late Queen Mother, has been floated as
a possible destination for the Duke. The property, which Charles
now owns, sits amid the Caithness countryside and features not

(03:39):
any grand gardens and royal china, but also farmyard animals,
including rabbits, ducklings and a wooden cow called Daisy. Royal
author Andrew Lowney speculator that Andrew might instead favor a
move abroad, joking that it's more likely that Air Myles
Andy would end up somewhere like Arbor Darby, where he
is a standing offer of a salubrious palace courtesy of
the ruling House of Nayan. But Royal commentator Duncan Larcom

(04:03):
told Metra that any such relocation would be a tough cell,
he said. I would find it very unlikely that Andrew
would ever agree to go up there and live. I
think it would be far more likely that he would
give up Royal Lodge reluctantly and move into something more modest.
He's very close to his two goals and he has
to consider what it means for Fergie, for the two
of them to be retired off to a castle in
rural Scotland. It's like something out of a brother's grim tail,

(04:25):
isn't it. I think Frogmore Cottage is a more manageable
size and it would be ideal if he moved there
more palacing. Just a moment, a royal tech blunder sparked
a fresh embarrassment for Prince Andrew, but as things go
in the Andrew verse, this is nothing. Andrew's previously defunct

(04:46):
official website unexpectedly sprang back to life, this time in Vietnamese.
The theory is that someone was cleaning the website to
remove titles and whatnot and somewhat went sideways. It appears
the redirect from Andrew's old dorme, the Duke of York
dot Org quietly broke instead of sending visitors to the
main Royal dot UK site, as it has done since

(05:07):
his twenty nineteen resignation. Is a working Royal The domain
appears to have relaunched and in Vietnamese. We checked it
out ourselves and it was in Vietnamese, although we were
able to translate it to English, which revealed some usage
of the Duke of York title. In the New York Times,
Tenure Gold writes, monarchy is a lottery. Sometimes you get

(05:28):
a dud her take on Prince Andrew in public, he
presents less as someone unable to tell the truth and
as someone who is unsure of what the truth is.
In what may have been the weirdest part of the
infamous BBC interview, he said that Miss Jeffrey couldn't have
thought he was sweaty when she said they danced at
a nightclub, because he said he cannot sweat, a medical
condition that dated back to his combat tour in the

(05:50):
Falklands War. He is vain and he thought he could
redeem himself by force of personality. He was wrong. The myth,
of course, is that the Royal family is ordained by God,
can therefore only be unordained by God. God so far
has said nothing as far as we know. In reality,
the British royal family rules by consent and a part
of the world that toppled many of its crowned heads,

(06:11):
perhaps Burghs hosen Zolms, Romanov's a century ago. Their survival
is dependent on good manners and public women, their actions
calculated for self preservation. You don't keep a throne for
a thousand years by being sentimental. If Britains no longer
consented to Prince Andrew, then making a once Duke of
York livers Mere mister might be a perfect expression of
the constitutional monarchical ideal power and submission. Andrew once told

(06:37):
a journalist he would rather be a plumber than a prince.
Perhaps there's still time. In The Spectator, Alexander Luney writes,
it is looking increasingly likely that long before William accedes
to the throne, Andrew's personal position will have shifted. It
always seemed to close run thing as to whether it
would be money or sex that brought Prince Andrew down,
given his alleged deep interest in both such matters. Were

(06:59):
the disgraced royal, it would be heading off on a
private jet to the UAE or similar birth as swiftly
as they could, to spend my days in exile there
at the behest of some Middle Eastern potentate who is
less bothered about Andrew's actions than the outraged people he
once called his subjects. His boot filling career as a
trade envoy has ensured that he has numerous contacts of

(07:20):
dubious degrees of probody who will only be too keen
to ensure a palace or similar graand residence can be
placed at his disposal. A wiser man would long since
have accepted that this is the only conceivable option that
remains for him, But Andrew is a toxic combination of
stupid and stubborn. He still believes that some evidence will
emerge that will clear his name and allow him to

(07:40):
resume his place at the heart of the royal family.
He continues to deny all allegations against him, and apparently
considers that leaving the country will be tantamount to an
admission of guilt. Yet, like his similarly disgraced great uncle,
the Duke of Windsor, it is obvious that his life
in Britain is now untenable. It would be better for
all concerned, at least the family that he continues to

(08:01):
profess loyalty too. If the nation were rid of this
decidedly person and ungrative figure once and for all, and
there you haven't. If you'd like to email us, our
address is the palasintrig at gmail dot com. Please follow
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all the social media science. I am Mark Francis my

(08:24):
thanks to John McDermott. This is Palasindrigan Canderns