What now for Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie? Royal expert Emily Andrews thinks Prince William will eventually need them

It's hard not to feel sorry for the York princesses as they navigate the fallout from their parents’ scandal, including Andrew's arrest.

Both sisters have been pictured in London in recent weeks - although Eugenie lives mainly in Portugal with her husband Jack Brooksbank and two sons (where she is said to be resisting Sarah Ferguson moving in), while Beatrice lives in the Cotswolds with her husband and two young daughters.

But I was very saddened by suggestions that her six-year marriage to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi may have hit troubled waters.

According to a newspaper report, there has been a notable 'distance' between the elder princess and her husband, as Edo tries to protect his luxury interior design consultancy from the toxic fallout from the Epstein files.

The 'evidence' was a flurry of pictures on Edo's public Instagram page - since removed - that showed him posing up a storm in Palm Beach, Florida, on a recent business trip.

Sure, the snaps of him in a debonair pink suit matching the striped pink umbrellas and awnings of a luxury hotel screamed 'poseur'.

But is he supposed to don sackcloth and ashes while his wife's life, and presumably her own consultancy business (and thus income) comes under sustained pressure?

I don't think we can read too much into a business trip - and neither Edo or Bea have commented - although the very fact that the piece was printed at all suggests all is not well.

It's been a torrid time for both princesses - the collapse of the House of York, their father's arrest and the sustained humiliation and emotional toll over their parents' links to a convicted paedophile.

And on top of that, calls that their titles and their 'peppercorn rent' London homes in St James's Palace and Kensington Palace should be removed.

Yet both girls were mentioned hundreds of times in the Epstein files, and in Beatrice's case, she helped her mother navigate some of the aftermath of Epstein's prison sentence as far back as 2011.

Although neither princess has spoken publicly about the scandal, it's hard to think they just blindly accepted their parents' protestations of innocence when they knew why Epstein had been imprisoned.

The contagion has extended to them - now isolated in public from the wider Royal Family. It's been reported that they won't be invited to the Royal Box at Ascot or to help out at Buckingham Palace garden parties.

Personally, I think Prince William will need both girls - whom I've met and think are decent sorts - when he becomes monarch. Not as working royals but just to help out with the pageantry.

I hope, for their sakes, that both they and their marriages can withstand a really tough time.

More from the Palace

I've got to admit I found it a little strange that Prince William allowed his team to brief on his ‘quiet faith' ahead of the formal installation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullally, last month.

It was a pretty lukewarm (at best!) endorsement of his role as future Supreme Governor of the Church of England. He's not a regular churchgoer, has been known to miss important services to go skiing and frankly, has never looked like he takes faith seriously, unlike his spiritual father.

Surely if he wants ‘a strong and meaningful bond with the Church and its leadership' he should say that in his own voice either via a TV or newspaper interview -emily or just a social media video, which is his preferred style - not via nameless ‘sources'.

For a man who professes to want change, he seems to expend an awful lot of energy justifying why he does so little.

This feature first appeared in Woman magazine. Subscribe now and get your first 6 issues for £1.