Exiled from the royal family, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is weighing his next move as he prepares to leave Royal Lodge, the 30-room Windsor mansion he has called home for more than two decades.
The former Prince Andrew was ordered to surrender his lease on the property earlier this year after King Charles stripped him of his remaining royal titles and honors amid renewed scrutiny of his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. While he will be receiving a private residence on the Sandringham estate, now owned by his brother, Charles, insiders say his future remains unsettled.
Royal biographer Robert Jobson suggests the former Duke of York’s exile could extend beyond the U.K. following the King’s recent meeting with the ruler of Bahrain.
“The King saw the King of Bahrain the other day. One never knows — it could be a place where Andrew gets the recognition of being the second son of Queen Elizabeth, rather than this,” says Jobson, whose latest book Windsor Legacy is out on Jan. 6.
Jobson adds that relocation to the Middle East would not be unprecedented. Spain’s former King Juan Carlos I has lived in Abu Dhabi since 2020 after stepping back from public life amid financial scandals.
Speaking more broadly, Jobson notes: “Other disgraced people have gone to the Middle East. Andrew did a lot of business in Bahrain, and he’s still relatively young.”
PEOPLE has reached out to a representative for Andrew for comment.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor pictured driving in Windsor in fall 2025.
TheImageDirect.com
Fellow biographer Andrew Lownie, whose book Entitled was a bestseller in the U.K., also believes the Middle East remains a likely option for Andrew.
“He doesn’t like the sound of being on the Sandringham estate, I think he wants to go somewhere where he can just get away from everything,” Lownie adds.
While Marsh Farm, a modest property on the Sandringham estate, has been widely cited as Andrew’s most immediate destination, Jobson questions whether it will be a long-term solution.
“I just can’t see him being on an isolated farm in Sandringham,” Jobson says.
Pegusus
Andrew’s ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson — who also called Royal Lodge home for more than two decades — is charting a separate path. She is said to be seeking an independent new life and is looking for a home of her own, possibly in the Windsor area, but apart from Andrew. Ferguson has also set her sights on rebuilding her commercial ventures and book-writing career.
“She’s a fighter,” a source close to Ferguson tells PEOPLE.
Marsh Farm on the Sandringham estate where Andrew is set to have as his British home, according to speculation.
Lucia Graphus/Alamy Live News
The couple split in 1996 but remained close, with Ferguson moving into Royal Lodge soon after Andrew took over the lease in 2003. Jobson, who has covered Ferguson’s ups and downs in — and on the fringes of — royal life for decades, notes that her post-divorce years were marked by financial strain after she stepped away from the royal fold.
“I have a degree of sympathy for her,” Jobson says. “When she was divorced [from Andrew] her financial settlement was not huge, unlike Princess Diana’s, and she was introduced to this lifestyle and lived it in a way that almost bamboozled her and has been in incredible debt ever since. She never got the payoff she should have got.”
Ferguson and Andrew spent Christmas at Royal Lodge this year, while their daughters, Princess Princess Beatrice, 37, and Princess Eugenie, 35, chose a different path — joining the wider royal family as guests of King Charles, 77, at Sandringham in Norfolk.
Andrew with his daughters Beatrice and Eugenie, left, at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral in Sept. 2022.
Paul Grover/Shutterstock
Jobson says he was not surprised that Beatrice and Eugenie chose to spend Christmas at Sandringham, where they walked to church with King Charles and Queen Camilla, alongside Prince William and Kate Middleton.
“It’s easy to say this is a snub to their parents, but they would say, ‘I’m a royal princess, I’m in line to the throne, I have been invited to attend the King’s Christmas celebrations, and you don’t turn down the King’s invitation,'” Jobson says.
“It’s not an invitation – it’s a command, really,” he adds.
Despite the public separation on Christmas Day, the family has remained in close contact throughout the ongoing scandal. As grandparents, Ferguson and Andrew attended the christening of Beatrice’s daughter, Athena, at St. James’s Palace on Dec. 12. Both kept a deliberately low profile, arriving discreetly and leaving without attending the pub after-party in central London.
“They have to focus on their own families, and we all know that’s what people tend to do as they get older. There’s a sense they would put an arm around mom, but dad will be left to get on with it.”
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Princess Eugenie (center) and Princess Beatrice (back) join the royal family on Dec. 25, 2025 in Sandringham.
Jordan Peck/Getty
Behind the scenes, Andrew and Ferguson had believed they could resist efforts to force them out of Royal Lodge, pointing to Andrew’s long-term lease on the Windsor property. But with scrutiny surrounding Andrew’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein refusing to fade, a months-long standoff between Andrew and palace officials — and ultimately King Charles — became known in royal circles as the “siege of Royal Lodge.”
That impasse ended in late October 2025, when Charles ordered his brother to surrender the lease on Royal Lodge.
“[Andrew and Sarah] were relying on [the royal family] leaving them at Royal Lodge and fought very hard to stay there,” Jobson says.