The VERY surprising whispers about who is now paying Prince Andrew’s Royal Lodge bills after he was ‘cut off’ by the King…

As parlor games go, the question of who stepped in to fund Prince Andrew’s future in the whitewashed grandeur of Royal Lodge, Windsor, has been the only issue under discussion for weeks.

Since the revelation that the Duke of York had secured a cash lifeline for the 30-room mansion, the hunt for his mysterious benefactor has consumed London society.

Who, everyone wants to know, has the resources to take on King Charles after his demands that his brother retire to the more modest Frogmore Cottage, once the Sussexes’ home?

Wealthy names from the Middle East to the Russian steppes have been in the picture, but now I can reveal that there are those in aristocratic circles who believe the prince’s secret patron is someone much closer to home.

He may even own a rather large estate next door.

They suspect that the threat of ‘expulsion’ is an elaborate double bluff by the king. I have heard from several sources that, instead of cutting Andrew off, Charles personally paid his errant brother’s maintenance bills and promised that his problems would be taken care of in the Royal Lodge so that he could live there in the may continue for the foreseeable future.

The question is not how he did it, but why. Why would the monarch cut through the chaos of Andrew’s finances and social life to save his brother’s position in the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal?

The first person to suggest that the king had opened his private purse on his brother’s behalf was someone who was once close to Andrew.

King Charles with Prince Andrew. Charles has demanded that his brother downsize from Royal Lodge to the more modest Frogmore Cottage

Royal Lodge is crumbling on the outside and messy on the inside, a far cry from its glory days as the Queen Mother’s Windsor residence

‘He [Andrew] just doesn’t have that many friends anymore. He hardly comes out, he is not that welcome anywhere,” says the source.

“So it has to be family, and the obvious person is the king. I mean, why would anyone who isn’t related want to give him money if they can’t get anything out of it other than a bunch of bullshit?’

Gone are the days when Middle Eastern moneymen could bail out the prince – as disgraced Turkish banker Selman Turk once did to the tune of £1.4 million (which Andrew repaid in 2021).

With wealthy investors giving Andrew a wide head start, his money will likely come from the Windsors, and with Prince William reluctant to spoil his uncle, in comes Charles.

I would hardly have believed it if the same story hadn’t been shared at another glamorous – and usually ultra-discreet – dinner table a few days later. “Charles paid for everything,” revealed a longtime guest at Royal Lodge. ‘The king has cleared it. It’s all done.’

To be clear: my colleague was convinced that the money did not come from the state treasury, but from the monarch’s personal pocket. “Private financing,” they confided.

Royal Lodge is crumbling on the outside and cluttered on the inside, a far cry from its glory days as the Queen Mother’s Windsor residence. It was there that Charles sought the company of his grandmother when his relationship with his parents was at a low ebb.

So could it be that this house has an emotional claim on him, predating his brother’s acquisition of the 75-year lease in 2003? Is it true that Charles is protecting a place dear to him?

The Mail’s story last month

If that is true, could the king’s reasons for financing Andrew be less brotherly than practical? He is known for his passionate interest in architecture and nature conservation. Charles knows that a protracted dispute over the Royal Lodge, with Andrew refusing to budge but unable to preserve the Grade II listed 19th century mansion, could cause irreparable damage to the building.

Finally, there is the argument made by the first person who shared this claim with me: Charles simply cannot betray his brother.

We know that the late queen secured her eldest son’s happiness by asking her subjects to accept Camilla as queen consort. Is it true that Charles has shown similar generosity towards his brother, respecting their late mother’s wishes that her second son be cared for?

If this is true, there is likely a path to the Duchy of Lancaster. That is the property empire that provides the monarch with his personal wealth. Although the Sovereign Grant, the official mechanism supporting the King, is transparent, the Duchy is a more personal matter between him and his accountants.

The Lancaster estate’s net surplus was £27.4 million in 2023/2024, according to reports published last July. That would be enough to cover Andrew’s costs.

My colleague Robert Hardman revealed last month that the king had stopped paying his brother’s personal allowance, believed to be more than £1 million a year, and his £3 million bail.

Andrew’s expenses include the Royal Lodge’s annual rent of around £260,000, plus the estimated £400,000 needed to ‘repair, renew, maintain, clean and where necessary rebuild’ the property.

If my sources are to be believed, and Charles personally took financial responsibility for these lower amounts, that would be a double bluff worthy of a le Carré novel.

We may never know the truth, but royal watchers will soon be able to gauge the brothers’ relationships. On Christmas Day there is the traditional walk on the Norfolk estate. If Andrew is present at the king’s invitation, we can assume that blood – blue blood, of course – will prove to be thicker than water.

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