REBECCA ENGLISH: Royal insiders tell me the King is desperately hoping Andrew will ‘do the right thing’ and STAY AWAY this Christmas. But the disgraced duke is an ‘obstinate’ man…

As the nation prepares to sit down and break bread with their loved ones and, ahem, sometimes not so loved ones this season of Goodwill, the King is confronted with a particularly tricky Christmas conundrum.

What to do with his troublesome brother, Prince Andrew, whose troubles seem like a particularly bad bout of the annual festive flu.

Because the truth is that the King won’t go so far as to ban Prince Andrew from joining the rest of the royal family for the much-loved church visit and walk at Sandringham.

He is ultimately his blood brother: he cannot divorce him, or even prevent him from seeing other family members.

But him is desperately hoping that the Duke of York will ‘do the decent thing’ and ‘resign’ himself to join them at Sandringham, to spare the rest of the royal family further embarrassment after his latest, and potentially very politically damaging, scandal , having a suspected Chinese spy as a “trusted” and trusted business advisor.

As things stand, I’m told, Andrew will join the rest of the family in Norfolk for the celebratory gathering next week.

He and his ever-growing family – including his ex-wife, the Duchess of York, and daughters Princess Beatrice and Eugenie and their children – were expected to take over Wood Farm, a large estate within the royal estate.

They will then join the rest of the 45-strong gathering, according to Germanic tradition, to exchange gifts on Christmas Eve and then for lunch on Christmas Day, with a very public walk to church taking place in the morning.

Now, embroiled in yet another furor of his own making, pressure is on for the Duke to ‘see sense’.

Charles, 76, finds himself in an enviable position after what has been an incredibly difficult year for him personally and for his family, given his and the Princess of Wales’ cancer diagnoses and his wife Queen Camilla’s recent pneumonia.

This year’s gathering was set to be one of the largest in recent history, with even Camilla’s children invited, to acknowledge the challenges of the past twelve months and their hopes for a happier 2025.

Families are complex at the best of times and what gathering doesn’t have a difficult relationship at the table, especially at this time of year?

But friends suggest 64-year-old Andrew must know his presence will put His Majesty in a very awkward position.

Allowing him to attend the meeting would amount to him putting his arm around his brother’s shoulder in a very visible way, just days after he became embroiled in an explosive spy scandal.

But ‘banishing’ him would be the equivalent of a public excommunication – and now that all the apron strings have finally been cut, who knows what the Duke might do next?

I understand that Andrew will still have the opportunity – if he wishes – to see his family at the private pre-Christmas lunch that the King is hosting for his extended family (the cousins, nieces and nephews who don’t come to Norfolk). this week.

The location will almost certainly be Windsor Castle, which will have the added benefit of being able to slip in and out unnoticed by the cameras.

But after that? Well, sources say, it’s certainly a matter of that much-vaunted sense of ‘honor’ that Andrew told us all he had during his infamous 2019 interview in the wake of the Epstein scandal and to politely withdraw from all royal festivities, for this year at least.

His family would certainly be grateful for it, I suspect, and he might even earn some respect.

The same goes for his insistence on staying at Royal Lodge, the enormous thirty-room mansion in which he and Sarah still run around.

It is absolutely true that he has a ‘cast iron’ lease on the property, as the duke’s friends like to say. The king and his advisors have no legal right to kick him out.

Andrew with Sarah, Beatrice and her husband Edoardo Mozzi at Sandringham last year

But they are deeply concerned that Andrew’s “stubbornness” in maintaining such a money pit has put him in a position of financial peril, where he is forced to go around, cap in hand, just to to keep himself afloat.

As we know, His Majesty has offered him the five-bedroom Frogmore Cottage, Harry and Meghan’s former home in Windsor, which has the added benefit of being within the castle’s ‘ring of steel’, meaning Andrew’s safety is also covered would be.

The Duke has flatly rejected this attempt to downsize him, even despite the King’s decision to deprive him of his annual allowance (the financial allowance previously paid to him by the late Queen from her private wealth which was subsequently taken over). by Charles) as well as all his remaining security.

I understand that they would both be reinstated if he chose to take up Frogmore’s offer – the King’s way of ensuring that his brother or sister would not be under so much ‘financial pressure’, and him discourage them from seeking other sources of income. .

But as things stand, Andrew is not backing down and the stalemate continues.

Will the ‘spy scandal’ change things, who knows? But the king clearly hopes so.

To his credit, Andrew never went down the route of, say, releasing a tell-all memoir or throwing mud at the family via an Oprah-style interview or a Netflix documentary.

And the current feeling is that it’s unlikely he ever will.

But if the duke has any hope of rehabilitation, many in royal circles believe he should graciously take up his brother’s remaining olive branch over his living arrangements and withdraw from family events entirely.

Starting with a polite rejection of turkey and stuffing next week.