It’s Disclosure Week over in the UK, with Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace courtiers sitting down with royal reporters and talking them through the royal finances at the end of the British “tax year.” Just in time for the Windsors’ summer holidays too – they really want to drop these disclosures and walk away for three months. There’s a lot of information to get through, but this one deserves its own stand-alone story. Remember how King Charles evicted the Duke and Duchess of Sussex from Frogmore Cottage last year? Remember how the eviction came after the Sussexes paid for extensive renovations on the dilapidated shack they were “gifted” by QEII? Remember how they had a valid lease and Charles still evicted them, and then he was fully prepared to give the cottage to Prince Andrew? Yeah, funny story – Frogmore is still sitting empty.
Frogmore Cottage is still lying empty more than a year after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were forced out, as Prince Andrew refuses to move into the residence. Prince Harry was asked to remove his remaining possessions from the property just weeks after he published his explosive memoir Spare last year.
The Sussexes had provoked fury by spending £2.4 million of taxpayers’ money renovating it, but they covered the costs themselves following the outcry.
The Duke of York was offered the option to move into the cottage, instead of residing in the £30 million Royal Lodge while he has no apparent source of income, but he declined. Prince Andrew was forced to step back from royal duties amid the scandal over his friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The King has long been trying to persuade him to leave his 30-room Windsor mansion in favour of Frogmore Cottage.
But yesterday a Buckingham Palace spokesman confirmed that Frogmore is still empty as they detailed the annual Sovereign Grant report, which sets out how the monarchy is funded by taxpayers.
‘I think at this point I wouldn’t speculate on who would be the future occupant of Frogmore Cottage,’ they said.
These people suck so hard. All of them – the focus on Frogmore specifically is all about the Sussexes and the British media’s gloating that the Sussexes were evicted out of spite. But there are so many cottages, mansions, palaces, forts and castles sitting empty on Crown-owned estates or part of private royal real estate holdings. Charles has made this big deal about how much money can be made renting out all of these properties and he still can’t fill Frogmore. It’s wasteful, stupid and extremely petty.
Photos courtesy of Netflix/The Sussexes. Cover courtesy of The Sun.