Charles Parading Andrew’s Daughters at Church is a Christmas Catastrophe For the Monarchy

The Christmas church walk was a grotesque and foolish exercise in reputation laundering that exposes the monarchy’s enduring addiction to entitlement and denial.

The royal Christmas walk to church was, for decades, one of those perfectly calibrated Windsor non-events: a bit of tweed, some staged chats with the hoi polloi.

Nothing happened, and that was the point. The point was continuity not news.

Then, King Charles arrived on the throne.

This year (once again) Charles ensured that the walk was not just newsworthy but explosively so, by making the extraordinary decision to parade the daughters of ex-Prince Andrew—Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie—at his side, in full public view, at precisely the moment when their father’s disgrace had once again been freshly underlined in the most toxic possible way.

Just two days ago, a tranche of newly released material connected to the Jeffrey Epstein case was released, and while none of it changed the essential facts that have been obvious for years, it did serve to re-cement Andrew’s shame.