Princess Beatrice offered a rare glimpse inside her royal home while filming a podcast with her sister Princess Eugenie.
During the Saturday, May 4, episode of the “Lessons From Our Mothers” podcast, Beatrice, 36, appeared via video chat, offering a small glimpse inside the home she shares with husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi. The couple set down roots in a sprawling farmhouse worth an estimated $4.6 million in the Cotswolds region of England in 2021.
Beatrice and Edoardo have never shown photos of the inside of their home on the private property. In the background of Beatrice’s video, fans could see cream white walls, warm overhead lighting and a simple black-and-white framed picture leaning against the wall on the top of a short bookshelf.
Along with the look inside her home, Beatrice and sister Princess Eugenie shared a rare glimpse inside their childhoods, as well as their relationship with their mom, Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson.
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“She’s always kept us so grounded,” Eugenie, 35, said of her mother during the podcast. “When you feel bad about yourself and the world, you give back to others. And Beatrice and I, from little, have always gone with mum on all her charity work, and that is so integral to her as a human.”
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Eugenie went on to share the story of her 18th birthday, which she spent with Beatrice and Ferguson at the Teenage Cancer Trust, of which her mother is a patron. (Ferguson also founded the Children’s Crisis Charity in 1993). “We spent half a day looking around and talking to the patients,” Eugenie recalled. “That was something she’s instilled in us from a very early age, to give back.”
Ferguson, 65, announced that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer in June 2023 after a routine mammogram. She has since undergone a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery.
“She’s renamed her new breasts Derrick and Eric,” Beatrice said on the Sunday podcast. “The joy with which she introduces Derrick and Eric to the conversation is amazing.” Beatrice also shared “one of the best ways” their mother has handled her illness since being diagnosed.
“[She’s] taking her example and her lessons and making sure other people get the checks that they really need, and taking the time to tell her story, making sure she’s telling it in her voice, in the right way, so that other people can really learn from it,” Beatrice explained. “She loves nothing more than meeting people and those that are also suffering with cancer, because there’s so much empathy there.”
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Less than one year after her first diagnosis, the duchess revealed in January 2024 that she had been diagnosed with malignant melanoma, a form of skin cancer. “Cancer is something that touches so many people,” Beatrice said. “I think for her, knowing that she might have been able to do something or help another person by sharing her journey, that’s been giving her the motivation and energy she needs to really get through this time.”
Beatrice and Eugenie not only learned how to give back from their mother, but she also taught them how to resolve conflict at home. For the royal sisters, it started with the typical squabbles between siblings.
“She would sort of channel us to be really open,” Beatrice explained. “There was never any secrets. That’s really important as well. If we were worried about each other or the rest of it, anything was on the table. It forced Eug and I into a communication point, especially over silly childhood fights about whose pink Converse trainers were the right size.” Eugenie, in response, quipped, “I remember that fight,” to which Beatrice concurred, “It was a big one.”
According to Beatrice, “Mum just jumped into that fight and she was like — honestly, it was like probably watching a boxing match or something — she was like, ‘Come on, you can do it!’” Beatrice noted that, at the time, she was “slightly annoyed” by her mother’s “forced collaboration,” saying it was because “she’s gonna push you on a bit of a nerve.”
“But the forced collaboration and that joy of kind of making up at the end was a big part of what she instilled in us as well,” Beatrice explained. “This sense that it’s okay to feel, it’s okay to push on those emotions, but you have to figure out what the resolution looks like as well. She was very resolution driven.”
It appears that Ferguson’s parenting style has rubbed off on her daughters. Beatrice welcomed her second baby, daughter Athena, with husband Edoardo in January this year. (The couple also share daughter Sienna, born in September 2021, and son Christopher Woolf “Wooflie,” who was born in 2016 from Edoardo’s previous relationship with Dara Huang.)
Royal experts told Us Weekly in February that the new baby, who is partially named in honor of her great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth II, will likely have a much different upbringing than other royal descendants.
“Athena will just be a member of the family,” Hugo Vickers, a royal historian and biographer, told Us. “Otherwise she will have a completely non-royal upbringing.”
Vickers also said that Athena and her siblings will have more privacy than the eldest children of Prince William and Princess Kate Middleton — Prince George, 11, and Princess Charlotte 9 — and will also “have as normal an education as possible, but obviously they do take part in royal engagements.
