Prince Andrew ‘stays at Balmoral despite daughter Beatrice giving birth

The beleaguered Duke of York is yet to return from Scotland to meet his new granddaughter.

It was announced yesterday that his eldest daughter Princess Beatrice has become a mother for the first time, giving birth to a 6lb 2oz baby girl on Saturday.

The news, which comes only seven months after younger daughter Eugenie gave birth to her son August, has already been welcomed by Sarah, Duchess of York.

She is said to have returned from Balmoral on Friday and met her new grandchild over the weekend.

A friend of the duchess told the Mail: ‘She’s perfect and Sarah is absolutely smitten. She’s always very proud of both girls but to have two grandchildren in a year is a total joy.’

The friend smilingly suggested that Beatrice’s daughter might even have inherited her mother and grandmother’s flame-coloured locks, saying: ‘She’s got a hint of red… and a hint of gold.’

But it seems that Sarah’s troubled former husband has not returned with her.

Prince Andrew bolted back to the Queen’s Scottish estate just over a week ago – days before the first hearing into a US sex assault claim brought against him by long-term accuser Virginia Roberts.

Andrew, who has repeatedly denied the allegations, is currently in crisis talks about his legal strategy after a disastrous attempt to defer the case by arguing the papers had not been served properly.

The duke is said to be a doting grandfather to August and will undoubtedly be keen to meet his first granddaughter. But sources say they have no idea when he will return to Windsor.

One told the Sun: ‘Andrew has made it quite clear that he wasn’t leaving Balmoral. It would appear the advice to him was to stay in hiding and miss the whole thing.’

Beatrice, 33, yesterday spoke of her ‘delight’ at becoming a mother for the first time, thanking London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their ‘wonderful care’.

And she and her husband, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, said they cannot wait to introduce their as yet unnamed baby to half-brother Christopher Woolf – known as Wolfie.

The Queen, the Duke and Duchess of York and Mr Mapelli Mozzi’s family are all said to be ‘delighted’ for the couple.

Eugenie also congratulated her sister, writing on Instagram: ‘Congratulations on your new angel. I can’t wait to meet her and I’m so proud of you. We’re going to have so much fun watching our children grow up.’

A friend of the family said the Duchess of York returned from Balmoral on Friday and met her new grandchild over the weekend, adding: ‘She is absolutely over the moon.’

Chelsea and Westminster is an NHS hospital but houses the private Kensington maternity wing, which charges a starting price of £7,450 for a ‘platinum vaginal delivery package’ and £9,050 for a ‘platinum elective or emergency section package’.

The price includes meals and accommodation for the partner and a private room for the first night post delivery.

Buckingham Palace refused to comment on whether Beatrice was admitted to the Kensington Wing. It is understood she has since been discharged and returned to the St James’s Palace apartment she shares with Edo.

The baby, whose name has not yet been revealed, is the Queen’s 12th great-grandchild and 11th in line to the throne. Her Majesty is ‘delighted with the news’, the palace announced in a statement.

Although her mother is a princess, she will not have a royal title. Only grandchildren of the monarch through the male line are automatically entitled to the styling of HRH.

This means she will be Miss Mapelli Mozzi. The Queen could bestow a title on her great-grandchild if desired, but it is unlikely to be asked for.

While Beatrice tends to keep a low profile, she has been seen several times out and about in London over the summer, including attending Wimbledon with Edo, 38, in July.

It was reported yesterday Andrew had left Balmoral to fly to London to see his daughter in hospital however today his car was seen being driven on the estate.xx

He was at the Queen’s Aberdeenshire estate to hold crisis talks with his family and advisers over Miss Roberts’s bombshell sex abuse lawsuit after a ‘disastrous’ week trying to fight the damning allegations.     

Miss Roberts, now known as Virginia Giuffre, accuses him of sexually abusing her when she was a minor under US law after she was trafficked by billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The duke denies the allegations.

Prince Andrew’s legal team have contested whether he has been officially notified about Ms Giuffre’s claim for damages.

In a tweet from her official Twitter, Beatrice said she was delighted’ to ‘share the news of the safe arrival’ of the couple’s daughter, adding: ‘Thank you to the midwife team and everyone at the hospital for their wonderful care.’

Buckingham Palace said in a statement: ‘Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrice and Mr Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi are delighted to announce the safe arrival of their daughter on Saturday 18th September 2021, at 23.42, at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London.

‘The baby weighs six pounds and two ounces. The new baby’s grandparents and great-grandparents have all been informed and are delighted with the news.

‘The family would like to thank all the staff at the hospital for their wonderful care. Her Royal Highness and her child are both doing well, and the couple are looking forward to introducing their daughter to her big brother Christopher Woolf.’

The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall congratulated Beatrice and Edo on Twitter.

The tweet said: ‘Congratulations to Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi on the happy news of the birth of their daughter.’

The baby is the fourth great-grandchild of the Queen to be born this year, following the arrival of Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank’s son August in February, Zara and Mike Tindall’s son Lucas in March and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s daughter Lilibet in June. 

Princess Beatrice has been seen several times in London throughout the summer as she enjoyed the lifting of restrictions ahead of the birth of her first child. 

Just last week she was spotted out and about in Mayfair as she dined out with friends in the city.  

Bookies have revealed that Sarah is a likely contender for the name of Princess Beatrice and her husband Edoardo’s newborn baby daughter – in tribute to the Duchess of York. 

Days ago, her mother Fergie fawned over her children, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, in a letter praising their ‘courage, strength and integrity’ and said she finds it ‘extraordinary’ that they’re both mothers.

In the letter, published in Good Housekeeping, Fergie, 61, said that she ‘smiles from her heart’ everyday knowing she’s a grandmother, and praised her two sons-in-law Edo and Jack. 

‘Being 61 makes me a young grandma, and I love it,’ she wrote. ‘I smile from my heart every day, because that is how it feels to be a granny.’

The Duchess of York has previously said she counts Edo’s son Wolfie as her grandchild. His mother is Edo’s ex, Dara Huang. 

American architect Dara remains on good terms with her ex and his new wife and Beatrice is a hands on stepmother.

Beatrice, who is not a full-time working royal, is vice president of partnerships and strategy at Afiniti, an artificial intelligence software firm.

She has a number of royal patronages including the Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice, the Teenage Cancer Trust and the Helen Arkell Dyslexia Centre.

Sources previously claimed ‘doting stepmother’ Princess Beatrice had put up ‘loads of pictures’ of Edo’s son in their home so he ‘feels like he has two families’.

Insiders told The Telegraph‘s Camilla Tominey that the royal has been embracing her new role, saying: ‘Beatrice ensured there are loads of pictures of him up in their house, so he feels like he has two families, and they do get on well. She has instigated a lot of that, rather than Dara.’

Edo is said to enjoy an amicable relationship with Dara and prides himself on still being an active part of his son’s life. Friends of the royal said she talks about the youngster ‘all the time’ and has warmly embraced him into her life.

They added that he is ‘super little’ and ‘extremely cute’, adding that Beatrice will always make Wolfie’s happiness ‘her number one priority’ even when she and Edo decide to have children themselves.    

Previously speaking about her step-son, Beatrice said: ‘Homeschooling, that was definitely not my forte! Not going to lie. Sadly, I can’t blame that on dyslexia. 

‘But I’ve felt very lucky to have had the chance to work with my bonus son (Wolfie) over the course of the school closures. It was a huge learning curve for all of us.’ 

Edoardo is the son of former Olympic skier Count Alessandro Mapelli Mozzi and Nikki Shale. He is a count himself, and had been a friend of the York children for some time before getting engaged to Beatrice. 

Known as Edo to friends, he helped mend Beatrice’s broken heart following her split from Dave Clark in 2016 after 10 years together. 

He was educated at the prestigious Radley school in Oxfordshire before studying for a Master’s in politics at Edinburgh.

Beatrice has long enjoyed a close relationship with her property developer husband’s father. 

The count is keen for the Italian lineage to continue, it seems.

He told MailOnline last year: ‘Edoardo is the only male descendant taking the family into the next generation. 

‘He is a count — his wife will be a countess automatically and any of their children will be counts or nobile donna.’ 

Edo stands to inherit his father’s glamorous palazzo, Villa Mapelli Mozzi, which is a stone’s throw from Milan in Northern Italy. 

Nikki’s second husband, Edo’s step-father, was Christopher Shale, a senior Tory and a close friend of former prime minister David Cameron.

He collapsed and died in 2011 at Glasonbury Festival, after going missing for about 18 hours before he was found in a cubicle in the VIP area.

An inquest subsequently found he had been suffering from undiagnosed heart disease resulting from high blood pressure. So devoted was Edo to his stepfather that he named his son Christopher after him.

Beatrice and the rest of her family attended the funeral, with Nikki eventually becoming engaged for the third time to sculptor David Williams-Ellis.   

Prince who’s sparked at panic at the palace: Appalling judgment, ruinous wrong turns, a humiliating game of cat and mouse… and now the legal vice tightens for the Duke of York writes RICHARD KAY

Once, it would have been an excuse for a party, one of those lavish, themed affairs so common at Royal Lodge, where even the staff were required to put on fancy dress.

But while the birth of a second grandchild is a moment of great personal happiness for the Duke and Duchess of York, the occasion will not see a repeat of the type of celebration where, to the amusement of their guests, the servants once dressed as school dinner ladies — at least not yet.

For the arrival of Princess Beatrice‘s daughter — announced yesterday — comes amid a growing crisis over the sex abuse claims the new baby’s grandfather faces, and mounting concern inside Buckingham Palace over the tactics he is using to fight them.

According to weekend reports, there is increasing unease at how his highly-paid legal team have been apparently outwitted and outmanoeuvred by U.S. lawyers working for his accuser, Virginia Roberts.

Courtiers also fear that the strategy of silence employed by Prince Andrew is causing reputational damage to the Royal Family. The anti-monarchy group Republic has gleefully launched a billboard campaign featuring pictures of Andrew smugly captioned ‘No one is above the law’, a reference to the lawsuit filed against the Prince in New York.

Yet while it may be easy to dismiss Republic’s glib opportunism, the sentiments of its message are much harder to ignore. The fact is, Andrew’s response to the legal action and his general evasiveness have added to the impression that the Duke has something to hide.

And, once again, at its heart is the issue of judgment. Lack of judgment has been a running theme in this whole sordid saga and it existed long before Ms Roberts began her civil case accusing the Duke of sexual assault in 2001 while allegedly being trafficked by the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

It was there that day in December 2010 that Andrew was photographed walking in New York’s Central Park with Epstein, not long after the billionaire financier’s release from jail where he had served 13 months for procuring a child for prostitution.

And it was there when he followed the advice of his former private secretary Amanda Thirsk, who encouraged him to agree to the infamous Newsnight interview — only to lose her job in the calamitous fallout from the broadcast. While on that occasion his action might be more generously characterised as a misplaced sense of loyalty, there was no excusing what happened during the interview. Andrew’s judgement repeatedly went missing throughout the BBC broadcast when he failed to show a trace of empathy for Epstein’s victims or even regret over his friendship with the man.

It was in the aftermath of Newsnight, after he been forced to give up his public duties and with his image possibly tarnished beyond repair, that the prince turned to Gary Bloxsome, a UK criminal defence solicitor at Blackfords, a law firm with a stellar reputation.

The pair, who are both golfers, were introduced by a mutual friend and the lawyer’s initial brief was to head off an FBI inquiry into Andrew’s friendship with Epstein.But questions began to be asked over the decision not to fully engage with the legal process after U.S. prosecutors publicly humiliated the Prince when they announced on camera that he had provided ‘zero co-operation’.

This was to become a familiar approach as Mr Bloxsome insisted that Andrew adopt a policy of non-engagement. He used the same tactic in August when Ms Roberts sued him for undisclosed damages, accusing him of ‘rape in the first degree’.

In her claim, Ms Roberts says she was forced to have sex with the Duke on three occasions when she was 17: in London at the home of Epstein’s alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell, in New York at the American’s Manhattan townhouse and on his Caribbean island.

Andrew emphatically denies the allegations. But he has offered no formal legal response to the civil action. This strategy is widely regarded to have been a disastrous mistake for Andrew, who is under pressure to respond to the claim but faces a potentially embarrassing disclosure process if he does.

Last week’s unedifying spectacle of his lawyers arguing whether or not the Prince had been ‘properly’ served with the necessary legal papers added to the view that, in the face of a slick public relations campaign orchestrated by the Roberts team, the Bloxsome strategy has become threadbare.

The fact that U.S. lawyers were apparently briefed to represent the Prince in the civil action only two weeks ago added to the sense that Andrew’s team are responding to events rather than leading them. No wonder friends of the Duke have watched recent developments with alarm and are now asking if Andrew has become as entranced with Mr Bloxsome as he was once with Amanda Thirsk.

They believe the decision for the Duke to remain silent in the face of the allegations was a significant error. ‘He’s already been judged in the court of public opinion and the verdict has gone against him,’ says one friend. The Prince’s two visits to Balmoral this summer have also raised eyebrows. ‘Perception is everything in this,’ says one figure who used to advise Andrew.

‘Whatever the explanation, it looks like he is hiding behind his mother’s skirts and that is not good for him or for the Queen.’

For his part, the Duke is said to be committed to his legal team’s three-point plan: resolve the legal case, exonerate him — possibly with an apology — and, thirdly, work out what he does with the rest of his life. At the moment, the prospect of achieving any of this must seem remote but, despite reports that he is unhappy with recent advice, I am told Andrew is showing considerable resilience.

‘He has, in effect, been in lockdown ever since the Newsnight interview, so far longer than anyone else in the country, but he is coping,’ a source tells me.

He also remains convinced that the inconsistencies in the Virginia Roberts account will tell in the end. Friends who have discussed the case with him tell me that he always points out the claims she made ahead of their first encounter: that he was drinking (he is teetotal); and that originally she had alleged there were four encounters, while in her writ there were just three. One figure says: ‘I have to say that he has always been utterly consistent with me; he has no recollection of meeting Roberts let alone any of things she alleges they did.’

The Palace has been kept in the dark about the strategy and there is anxiety that the legal team the Duke has assembled is not able to fight a case under U.S. law. The optics of the case do not look good: Andrew’s stonewalling did not impress the New York judge, Lewis Kaplan, who warned his lawyers against wasting time and money on technicalities.

With days until the next hearing in the U.S., these are critical times for the Duke of York and the good name of the monarchy. Changing lawyers at this late stage, say sources close to Andrew, could be ‘counter-productive’. On the other hand, it could produce the breakthrough that has so far eluded even the brilliant Mr Bloxsome.

A new, winning strategy might even be worth throwing a party for.