Prince Andrew lands ‘killer blow’ in Royal Lodge row – but there’s one hitch, says expert

Prince Andrew was first offered the 5,089 sq ft Frogmore Cottage in March 2023, in exchange for giving up his lease on the palatial thirty-room Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park.

But the Duke of York has consistently refused to budge, even though his brother, King Charles, has cut off his million-pound-a-year living allowance and stopped paying for his private security team.

Now, Andrew’s problem appears to be behind him, with the news that an anonymous benefactor has offered to subsidise him to the tune of £3m a year.

But despite having landed a “killer blow’ in the long-running dispute, one problem remains for the prince, according to News.com.au’s royal reporter Bronte Coy.

“They’ve said that the the source is legitimate,” she told Virgin Radio, “but I don’t know what that means. I don’t know who this person is and also why and also for how long they make payments. That’s the big question.”

Bronte believes Andrew’s triumph could be short-lived: “I’d say he’s won the battle… but has he won the war long term? Well depends on who this person is that’s paying.”

The royals’ finances are “not very transparent,” Bronte says, and certainly ’s sources of income are very hard to trace. While he would have inherited a significant sum from his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth, and his grandmother, Elizabeth the Queen Mother, his outgoings are considerable.

Among his major expenses, settled a civil sexual assault case brought against him in the US by Virginia Giuffre for an undisclosed figure variously estimated at between £7.5m and £12m.

received an estimated £250,000 per year, including the cost of running an office, when his was a “working royal.” But that income disappeared in the wake of the catastrophic Newsnight interview in which he attempted to clarify the nature of his relationship with billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew remains close to his ex-wife, Sarah, Duchess of York, who admitted that she had made a “gigantic error of judgement” in accepting £15,000 from Epstein to pay off a debt.

Andrew himself reportedly had a £1.5m personal loan paid off by a company linked to a wealthy Conservative party donor in 2017 – although this has never been clarified.

Andrew and his wife were gifted Sunninghill Park as a wedding present from the Queen in 1986. He sold the 12-bedroom house to Timor Kulibayev, the son-in-law of the then-president of Kazakhstan via an offshore trust in the British Virgin Islands, for £15m – £3m more than the asking price.

‘s only other known income is an armed forces pension, thought to be about £20,000 a year.

This latest benefactor seems to have staved off Andrews’s immediate problems, but it’s unclear how long this new subsidy will last, Bronte says: “Are they going to pay for two years and then we’re going to still have this conversation two years from now?”