Princess Beatrice: is Andrew's eldest daughter actually the royals' hottest asset?

Was she really involved in her father Prince Andrew’s car-crash BBC interview, as Netflix suggests in Scoop? Should she and her younger sister Eugenie take up working roles in light of King Charles and Princess Kate’s cancer diagnoses? And when did she suddenly become a tech guru advising Spotify?

These are just some of the questions that have been swirling around Princess Beatrice, 35, the eldest Princess of York and eighth in line to the throne, in recent weeks.

The mother-of-two, a non-working royal who married interior designer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi in 2020 and has always been the more discreet of the two York sisters. She was reportedly advised to “keep a low profile” after Netflix’s controversial Prince Andrew film Scoop aired on Netflix last month and showed her accompanying the Duke of York to one of Newsnight’s negotiations with the BBC, dragging her into a PR storm.

The events of recent weeks, however, might have made keeping a low profile rather difficult. Last week it was announced that her ex-boyfriend, the self-professed New York playboy Paolo Liuzzo, was found dead in a Miami hotel room following a suspected overdose on February 7, painting the princess’ public appearances of recent months in a new light.

Hosting a charity tea party at St James Palace, filling in for the Princess of Wales at an event to mark Student Mental Health Week, and hosting a future of tech discussion at Spotify’s London HQ are among the appearances she’s made in recent months while grieving Luizzo. She dated him for a year from the age of 17 in what has been described as an intense and passionate first relationship. Insiders say she has been left “heartbroken” by the news of his death, with singer Ellie Goulding, supermodel-turned-entrepreneur Karlie Kloss and celebrity nutritionist Gabriella Peacock believed to be among the trusted inner circle rallying round her in support.

The Spotify event — a fireside chat about the future of modern-day business strategy and getting more women into tech — has raised eyebrows in particular, not only because the princess was seen supporting the same firm that famously cancelled its contract with her cousin Prince Harry last year, but because it speaks to a more business-focused, entrepreneurial side for Andrew’s eldest daughter.

The event saw Beatrice speaking alongside former WarnerBros Discovery president Priya Dogra and Foodhak founder Sakshi Chhabra Mittal — the latest in a series of engagements she’s held in her capacity as an AI and tech firm founder. Could this make her the royals’ hottest new asset as they seek to build an image of a modern-day monarchy?

From her role as her father’s negotiator to her burgeoning career in tech, here’s how Andrew’s eldest daughter became the the Firm’s secret weapon.

Beatrice was just 17 when she began dating Paolo Liuzzo, an art industry consultant and son of an Italian plastic resin tycoon who already had a criminal record for assault and battery, in 2005. He was 24 at the time and was described as a New York “playboy”, their “intense and passionate” relationship only becoming public when he joined the royal family on a skiing trip to Verbier in 2006 — raising eyebrows after revelations that he had travelled in defiance of a probation order relating to the manslaughter of a student during a drunken fight in Massachusetts four years previously.

“It was a stupid fist fight,” he said at the time, adding that he and Beatrice had initially kept their relationship secret because “if it came out that me and Bea were dating, it wouldn’t be good for her image or Sarah’s.” Beatrice is understood to have been the one who eventually brought the relationship to an end the following year, in 2006, despite once having wanted to introduce her boyfriend to her grandmother, The Queen. He had reportedly been unfaithful to Beatrice during the relationship, and she was left heartbroken.

She went on to date Dave Clark, an Uber executive nicknamed ‘dashing Dave’ who she been introduced to by her cousin Prince William at a party reportedly hosted by Pierce Brosnan’s son Sean in 2006. She and Clark dated for 10 years before she met her now-husband Mozzi, during which time she graduated with a 2:1 in history and history of ideas from Goldsmiths College in south-east London.

Liuzzo later revealed that their bond had been lukewarm, at least from his side. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to get in that deep with Bea,” he said after the split. “I loved her, but I wasn’t in love with her.”

The princess married her husband, the architect and interior designer Edo Mapelli Mozzi, 40, in an intimate ceremony at the Royal Lodge in Windsor at the height of the pandemic in 2020.

The pair were reportedly longtime friends through their parents before they began dating in 2018 — the same year she was maid of honour at her sister Eugenie’s wedding to Jack Brooksbank — and theirs went onto be a whirlwind but low-key love story: smiling together at various events and on glamorous holidays in early 2019; posing together for a relaxed engagement shoot in September that year; smiling out-and-about with Mozzi’s seven-year-old son Christopher Woolf, nicknamed Wolfie, from his previously relationship with the architect Dara Huang. The princess has spoken fondly of being a step-mother and teaching Wolfie to read over the years, having battled dyslexia herself growing up.

Mozzi and Beatrice welcomed their daughter Sienna, now two, a year after their wedding, on September 18, 2021, at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and the princess mentioned the prospect of “future children” in interviews since. "Our life together has just begun, and I can’t wait to see all the amazing things that await us,” Mozzi wrote on Instagram after the birth. “Feeling so much love and gratitude for my amazing wife, baby Sienna and Wolfie. These are the days I never want to forget. This week, a friend said to me the sweetest saying… that with every child you grow a whole new heart."

Sienna, who is tenth in line to the British throne, is reportedly nicknamed Sisi by her grandmother Ferguson, who recently told the Tea Talks podcast that Sienna refers to her as Gee Gee. "Sienna is absolutely gorgeous and looks exactly like Bea,” her godmother Gabriela Peacock, a celebrity nutritionist, revealed last month. “She's really cheeky and has a very good personality... Bea has such a good heart and she's such a kind person, so motherhood came very naturally to her; she's a fantastic mum."

Last year, a source close to Beatrice revealed that she’d like to have another baby “very soon” in a bid to make sure her children are all “close in age”.

Beatrice might not have an official Instagram account like her sister, but Eugenie’s grid offers a fascinating window into their close sisterly bond: giggling together at formal events, birthday tributes, throwback snaps to cheeky bridesmaid photos when they were children and awkward outfit choices when they were teens. “Bea and I are laughing hysterically after contemplating what on earth was in our handbags that day going to church,” reads the caption of one particularly comical image of the pair of them in the Nineties. “We quite clearly are loving our full lime green and lilac suits!!”.

The pair posed for Vogue together in 2018, talking about their sisterly bond and the realities of being twentysomething women in the spotlight: navigating a work-life balance as non-working royals, falling in and out of love with various boyfriends, being good friends and sisters to one another despite attending different boarding schools growing up (St Mary’s Ascot for Beatrice; Marlborough for Eugenie).

“We’re each other’s rocks,” Eugenie said at the time. “We’re the only other person in each other’s lives who can know exactly what the other one is going through... When we were younger, I always used to make her go into parties first. I’d hide behind her and she'd make the first move, then I’d get louder and louder as she made me more confident.”

The sisters’ special relationship with their cousins has been well documented over the years, too. The pair were close with William and Harry growing up, spending summer holidays at the Queen’s Balmoral estate in Scotland and playing together at Sandringham. The princes’ late mother Princess Diana was close with the princess’ mother Sarah Ferguson and they spent several ski holidays with the Yorks in the 1990s.

According to royal correspondent Richard Fitzwilliams, Beatrice and her sister were “pivotal” in keeping the link between the Sussexes and the rest of the royal family around the time of Megxit. Beatrice and her husband hired Misan Harriman, the same photographer as Harry and Meghan, for their engagement shoot in 2019; and at one point Beatrice was tipped as a possible guest on Meghan’s new podcast Archetypes.

That close bond is understood to have continued despite Harry’s increasingly soured relationship with the rest of his family. Reports as recently as last year suggest the princesses’ continued close bond with Harry was causing concern for The Firm, who were worried about what they might tell him. "They've got so much in common: the kids, a shared interest in philanthropy, and Harry enjoys offering advice to his cousin about how to further her career, while Meghan's great with parenting, lifestyle, and nutrition,” a source said in November. “For the King, Camilla, and the Waleses, it's rather unfortunate that Eugenie and Beatrice are so close with the Sussexes."

Annoyed and upset.

These were the words used by royal expert Jennie Bond, the BBC’s royal correspondent for 14 years, when asked how Beatrice will have felt about Netflix’s dramatisation of her father’s Newsnight interview in Scoop. The eldest of the York sisters was depicted as playing a crucial role in the negotiations with the BBC ahead of the interview, surprising the Newsnight team when they expect to be meeting with Andrew and his private secretary before Beatrice walks in too.

"Suddenly, [Prince Andrew] appeared, from around the corner of the short corridor: ‘Morning!’ His voice was upbeat. He was smiling. He seemed friendly. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I brought someone with me!’ This was not something that any of us had expected to hear. We exchanged glances. Who could it be? A lawyer? Someone else in communications? Maybe someone from the Queen’s staff? And then, from behind him, Princess Beatrice appeared,” Sam McAlister, the BBC producer who negotiated the interview, explains.

"To be frank, the only thing worse than speaking to a prospective interviewee about allegations of sexual impropriety and sex with a seventeen-year-old-girl is having to do so in front of his daughter. Princess Beatrice was polite and engaged, carrying a notebook and pen, but she was evidently anxious about the meeting, unlike her father. The atmosphere palpably changed for us all.

"Princess Beatrice was a total curveball. I had heard she was close to the Queen, who might well ask for her opinion on the meeting, and also knew that she was very close to her father and was clearly there to protect his interests and to ensure that we were the right people to speak to... The Prince’s eldest daughter was now, in my opinion, the person who could make the difference between us getting the interview and someone else.”

At the time, reports suggested that Sarah Ferguson was abroad, which was why Beatrice ended up sitting in on the discussions. Insiders say she was reportedly skeptical about a TV interview, “asking lots of pertinent questions” — but by the end of the meeting, she was convinced it was the only way to put all the rumours behind them.

Beatrice has never commented on the interview or the film’s release, but sources say she regrets supporting her father in agreeing to the interview now. "It is understood that Beatrice, with the benefit of hindsight, is now mortified that she did not do more to stop the interview going ahead,” another insider revealed days after the interview in 2019. "Beatrice has been in tears every day since the interview went out."

The interview resulted in Andrew stepping down from royal duties and later being stripped of his police protection and military medals — a move that will naturally have upset Beatrice and her sister, who had always been close with their father but were reportedly humiliated by his association with the Epstein scandal.

But commentators say she is not to blame. "It's probably quite unfair to blame Princess Beatrice for giving her father pretty well-meaning advice,” royal commentator Gareth Russell has since said. "Ultimately, the doing of the interview was not the problem. It was what was said in it, that was the problem. That interview was not a terrible idea had Prince Andrew said anything but what he went on to say.

"So I don't necessarily think Princess Beatrice deserves the criticism that she's received in terms of encouraging her father to do it. She's made it fairly clear that she believes her father to be innocent in this and that makes the advice doubly understandable, but the buck stops with Prince Andrew, not with his daughter."

Beatrice might not be a working royal — she and her sister both juggle day jobs while attending royal events — but insiders say William and Kate have been impressed by her dedication to duty since the start of the new year.

Despite learning of her ex-boyfriend’s death in February and reportedly being deeply affected by it, she has attended several high-profile events in the months since. From hosting a charity tea party for Helen Arkell Dyslexia Charity at St James’s Palace and joining her cousin Zara Tindall at Cheltenham races, to appearing at an event to mark Student Mental Health Week — a cause that has long been championed by the Princess of Wales, who is currently receiving treatment for the cancer diagnosis she announced in March.

She also took part in a panel on the future of tech came at Spotify’s London headquarters last month, hosting a fireside chat on strategies for designing businesses in the modern age and bringing more women into tech alongside former WarnerBros Discovery president Priya Dogra and Foodhak founder Sakshi Chhabra Mittal.

The trio posed for a picture in front of the Spotify logo at the event — a surprise to many royal fans, given news that Beatrice’s cousin Harry and his wife Meghan had their Spotify contract cancelled last year after they reportedly failed to meet “productivity benchmarks”. “Turns out Meghan Markle was not a great audio talent, or necessarily any kind of talent,” Jeremy Zimmer, CEO of United Talent Agency, said of the end of the deal.

Little might be known about Beatrice’s background in tech but the truth is she’s spent several years honing her specialism as an entrepreneur. Since 2017, she has split her time between London and New York as Vice-President of Partnerships and Strategy at US software and data firm Afiniti, which uses AI to improve the healthcare, telecommunications, hospitality, insurance, and banking industries.

She also works in strategy and business development for Big Change, a social-impact accelerator supporting young people, which she founded alongside five friends including Holly, Sam and Isabella Branson, the daughter, son and step-daughter of Virgin founder Richard Branson.

She was described as the “tech-obsessed” sister when she sat down with Vogue a year later, in 2018, having spend the previous fortnight chairing a Women in Leadership round table in Sydney and speaking about AI on a panel in Canada. She was quoted at the time as saying her favourite app was Happy Not Perfect, a mindfulness tool founded by fellow entrepreneur and former TV presenter Poppy Jamie.

Today, she is also listed as the director of BY-EQ, an advisory organisation focused on adding more exceptional emotional intelligence in an age of artificial intelligence, which she founded in 2022 under her working name, Beatrice York — the same name she uses on her LinkedIn page.

“It’s hard to navigate situations like these because there is no precedent, there is no protocol," she told Vogue in 2018 of the hectic nature of balancing her royal duties with the day job. “We are the first: we are young women trying to build careers and have personal lives, and we’re also princesses and doing all of this in the public eye.” So will we see more of Beatrice the tech princess as Charles and Kate continue to undergo treatment for cancer? Perhaps not in a working-royal capacity. While a friend of the sisters recently told the Daily Beast that the princesses of York were “very upset” not to have been asked by the King to step up and conduct more royal duties, the decision is likely to have come down to royal protocol.

“Charles is very fond of the York girls but everyone, including them, accepts there is no place for them to be full time working royals. And as the late Queen Elizabeth made clear, being a part-time working royal isn’t an option,” a friend explained in March

Working royal or not, royal commentator Gareth Russell believes we may well see more of Beatrice as the months since Netflix put a renewed spotlight on her father’s Newsnight fiasco. "We are seeing more and more talk about Princess Beatrice perhaps performing more public duties,” he said last week. "If she does more things, her storm in a teacup about her advice to her father before his interview will be forgotten.”

All eyes on the tech world, then, for the princess’ next public appearance. As The Firm seeks to modernise and earn greater favour with a younger, more tech-focused generation, Beatrice the entrepreneur might just be the royals’ hottest asset yet.