Nearly seven years have passed since Italian count Edoardo Mapelli-Mozzi uploaded his engagement pictures to Instagram, assuring his bride-to-be, Princess Beatrice, that he would always be by her side.
‘You will never be alone my love, my heart is your home. Hand in hand, today, tomorrow, and forever,’ he wrote. Beautiful words, to go with a set of exquisite black-and-white photographs, taken at Royal Lodge in Windsor, where Beatrice had grown up.
Life has taken a few twists since then. This year has been particularly painful for Beatrice as she struggles with the aftermath of her father’s disgrace. While her sister Eugenie cut off all contact with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor when he was stripped of his title and evicted from Royal Lodge, Beatrice kept in touch with him, albeit at arm’s length.
Yesterday, the Daily Mail revealed that Andrew – as bullish in attitude as ever (this is a man who is still insisting his staff call him ‘Duke’ or ‘Sir’) – wrote her a letter encouraging her to ‘keep her chin up’.
Where has her rock Edoardo – or Edo, as Beatrice calls him – been in this debacle? Well, not always steadfastly by her side as promised.
Two weeks ago, some more pictures were uploaded to Instagram – by broadcaster Piers Morgan, no less – that showed Edo partying in St Tropez, enjoying a lavish fish lunch at Le Club 55, its most expensive and ultra-exclusive beachfront daytime party restaurant. Enjoying £100-a- bottle Domaine La Rouillere Rose on ice with his lunch, Edo was in the presence of entertainment royalty, rather than the difficult-to-navigate in-laws.
Next to him was Amanda Holden, in a revealing dress, smoking cigars, alongside former glamour model Kelly Brook. Also present was Gabriela Peacock, the nutritionist who helped Prince Harry get in shape for his wedding and who is reportedly advising King Charles on his diet.
Where was Beatrice? The strange absence of the Princess prompted one guest to speculate that Edo was there alone and ‘behaving as if he is single’.

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Beatrice pictured with Edo. The Italian is said to be feeling the weight of the recent scandals that have engulfed his wife’s family, especially those of his father-in-law Andrew

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Edo, left, enjoying a lavish fish lunch at Le Club 55 in St Tropez, with his wife nowhere in sight

However, we can reveal that Beatrice was on that trip. She and Edo had been whisked to St Tropez for ‘respite’ by Gabriela, who thought some vitamin D, rest and good food would be a tonic.
However, the plan went haywire after Beatrice spent her first day at Le Club 55. The next morning she remained in bed, ‘too sick’ to leave the house.
While she stayed home all day, Edo went out to party.
What is concerning is that there has been a lot of that sort of separation lately.
It’s no secret that Edo – who runs an upmarket property company – feels the weight of the world on his shoulders as he tries to support his wife, their children (they have two daughters; and he also has a son from a previous relationship) and keep his business afloat. Given that the business – luxury property developers Banda Property – once benefited from the association with the former Prince Andrew, this is all rather awkward.
His attitude to his father-in-law is rather different to Beatrice’s. In fact, he has urged his wife not to be seen with Andrew, frankly because that association is now toxic for Banda’s brand.
A source close to Edo maintains that, as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal brewed, he took such drastic action to flee the UK – effectively abandoning his wife for the best part of a month in her ‘time of need’ – to reassure his high-net-worth international clients.
This was necessary to save his business, he insisted. As Edo himself told me: ‘As you well know, it is completely normal for a business owner to travel for work. It happens in every industry.’ Yet some eyebrows were raised in their circle during that three-week trip to the US with his colleague Holly Payne in January.

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The couple recently attended the wedding of Beatrice’s cousin Peter Phillips together

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Beatrice with her friend Gabriela Peacock, who invited her and Edo to St Tropez

Beatrice is said to have been left shrugging her shoulders at the ‘Italian ways’ of her husband as Edo posted a series of pictures of himself looking relaxed and at one point sharing a glass of wine with his colleague. He wrote: ‘A quick glass of vino with Holly: easing into the time change and the energy of Coconut Grove.’ All the while Beatrice remained at home, in the UK, with their two young daughters, picking up the pieces of the York family’s shattered life.
Edo’s trip took in LA and, of all places, the billionaires’ playground of Palm Beach in Florida.
This, of course, is the very place where Epstein lived. And Beatrice will remember it well, because it was here that her mother, Sarah Ferguson, took her, then aged 20, and Eugenie to meet the disgraced financier for lunch at his home in 2009.
They had flown there first class – with Epstein picking up the reported £10,000 bill – only four days after he had been released from prison for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
Fast forward nearly two decades and Edo has been hoping to procure clients of a very different kind, but in the same postcode that saw Epstein serve time under house arrest.
To put it simply, Edo needs wealthy people who are willing to overlook his dodgy in-laws to hire him to decorate their luxury houses. And Banda spares no expense – think expanses of superior marble, eye-wateringly dear and impeccably sourced furniture.
As his minimalistic style is achingly modern, his clients are not the toffs-and-tweeds set, but rich families who use their property as an investment – the kind of wealthy international clientele who are impressed by royalty but obsessed with privacy and anonymity.
All this is tricky now because the York sisters have been front-and-centre of lurid headlines for months and, frankly, that is bad for the balance sheet. And the couple – who are facing financial turmoil as well as the emotional sort – need his business to be a success.

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Edo enjoyed a solo trip to Palm Beach in Miami earlier this year while Beatrice stayed at home with their children

While Edo has his own well-developed contacts book thanks to his mother, who was married to the late Conservative MP Christopher Shale, he is not independently wealthy, nor is he a ‘millionaire’ in line for an Italian estate, as is so often claimed.
Far from it. In fact Edo is a self-starter, socially ambitious and in true Italian style, he takes pride in being the family breadwinner. Doubtless the sort of financial ‘perks’ that came with marrying into the Royal Family are still in evidence – but for how long?
In recent years, Edo has been able to make use of a two-bedroom apartment in St James’s Palace when in London for business – handy when most of his clients are Mayfair or Kensington types.
Even more helpfully, the King has been paying for the London base, allowing Edo to channel his money into a £3 million family home in the Cotswolds, bought with Beatrice, using some of her earned money, some family money and a hefty mortgage.
Yet the pressure is on the King to further reduce his support, which would leave Beatrice and Edo exposed.
What about her work?
Here we run into another issue. In some ways her mother’s daughter, Beatrice has also long relied on her contacts for income.
As a non-working royal, she wisely leveraged her extensive network and global connections to build a full-time career in the private sector as Vice President of tech firm Afiniti.
But in late 2024 her employer went bankrupt.
Of course, motherhood has kept Beatrice busy – her daughters Sienna and Athena arrived in 2021 and 2025 respectively – but she feels increasingly under pressure to, as one contact told me, ‘go to ground’ to ride out the current storms.
Little wonder then that those close to her felt she needed a sunshine break this month. In truth, many friends are desperately worried about her, caught between loyalty to her parents and her husband.
Lately, sources claim that Beatrice has been known to ‘drown her sorrows’ on a quiet night out at the pub or in friends’ houses, often collapsing into floods of tears if she’s had one too many.
Of course, well-connected friends have rallied – including Gabriela, a close confidante, who, fortuitously, happens to own a house on the Cote d’Azur (next door to Dame Joan Collins).
Naturally, I am told, Beatrice and Edo were not expected to foot the bill for flights, food or lodgings during the stay. Perhaps old habits die hard.

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Piers flew by private jet and shared a selection of pictures from the three-day break to his Instagram page. ‘Where better… than St Tropez in all its fabulous springtime glory,’ he wrote.
The eclectic mix of people smoked cigars and ate oysters and certainly made for a rowdy bunch at Le Club 55.
Edo would have enjoyed the distraction from the pressures of work and the spotlight that comes with having married into the problematic House of York.
Another source explains more about what has been happening behind the scenes. ‘Things have caught up with him and I think a lot of people are distancing themselves from him,’ the source says.
‘Plus work is not going well, which is probably why he goes abroad whole time.
‘He’s looking for new clients. If this business goes wrong they might not have much money, especially if she’s cut off by the royals. Their lifestyle is extremely expensive.’
Eye-wateringly so. When she was alive, the late Queen funded Beatrice, giving her and her sister the money for a £4 million Belgravia home, which they gave to their mother. The property generated £16,000 per month in rent. But it was suddenly sold for less than market rate last year – with the written permission of the York sisters.
Last week, one source told us that the situation seems rather fraught and strained.
‘People are very sympathetic to Beatrice. She’s very sweet and naïve and she’s been feeling very fragile,’ the source says.
‘But fewer people are lining up to bat for Edo. Surprisingly there are one or two members of the Yorks’ inner circle who don’t warm to him for some reason. They are saying that his financial woes are “karma”.’
And the clock is ticking for Beatrice and the man who promised always to be by her side. Sources close to Prince William have made it clear that when he becomes monarch, he intends to cut off her cushy deal to live for free in London on the Royal dime, arranged by the late Queen and currently upheld by the King.
Then she and Edo will be on their own.