Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice are set to ditch their parents, Prince Andrew and Fergie, with “Bea” blithely joining the official royal Christmas in Sandringham, to which the shamed prince and his ex-wife have been uninvited. This development, reported by the Daily Mail, has thrown the royal Christmas message of family unity into an extraordinary state of confusion. Andrew’s not invited, but his kids are? Aren’t the royals meant to bring people together? How does splitting up a family on Christmas Day fit into that template? Christmas is the royals’ most important PR exercise of the year. Ever since Queen Victoria invited the Illustrated London News into her not-so-humble abode to admire the decorated treetop that her beloved consort, Prince Albert, had dragged into the ballroom, thereby triggering a global fad for Christmas trees that has lasted well over a century and counting, the royals have sought to portray themselves as a model family at Christmas. They sell themselves at this time of year as hard as any brand keen to cash in on the festive vibes. However, not for the first time, it’s all gone down the tubes this year. Also, not for the first time, the cause of all the trouble is Prince Andrew, a man who apparently never heard of the concept of ceasing to dig when in a hole. Incredibly, Andrew managed to somehow make a new BFF of a rich Chinese spy whose briefing notes specified that he was “desperate” and would “grab onto anything.” The affair is a disaster for King Charles, whose weakness and ineffectiveness is now so obvious that even this weekend’s tsunami of end-of-year flattery in the extraordinarily supine U.K. papers won’t be able to hide it. Sure, Andrew is venal and an idiot but Charles looks like a dupe, which is arguably worse. Just weeks before the spy scandal exploded, the king’s Keeper of the Privy Purse (which sounds better than “accountant”) cleared Andrew’s sources of funding. This determination, which has now been very publicly revealed as flawed, gave the king a pretext to say Andrew could continue living in his palatial home, Royal Lodge. The bigger question is: why, after the late Queen Elizabeth broke her own heart by expelling her idiot, favorite son from the royals, did the king expend so much political capital on bringing him back into the royal family? How could the king not see what the whole world saw in that BBC interview, that a man stupid enough to defend a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein is not a good fellow to have around, even if he is your brother? The Daily Beast reported exclusively this week that Charles may not have to worry about the problem much more: Andrew, who has always liked the Middle East, where royals can do whatever they want without a shred of accountability or scrutiny, is planning to relocate there. Maybe Beatrice and Eugenie can ask the king if Andrew can keep the lease to Royal Lodge to bequeath to them, as he has always hoped to do, if they can deliver the king a terrific Christmas present; the promise that their father won’t ever set foot in the U.K. again without the monarch’s express permission. Also not helping matters: The Sunday Times' revelation today that Charles also wined and dined some shady rich Chinese guys. Oops! | 