Princess Beatrice Says Being a Modern Royal with a Day Job Is "Hard to Navigate"
Members of the royal family hardly ever give interviews, but in the September issue of British Vogue, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie of York offer a rare glimpse into their lives, just a few months before Eugenie's October 12 wedding.
In the piece by Ellie Pithers, Beatrice, the older daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah, Duchess of York, shares that being a modern royal with a separate career can be "hard to navigate."
"There is no precedent, there is no protocol,” Beatrice says. “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.”
While Beatrice and Eugenie often appear at large royal events with the rest of their family, like Christmas church services or the Queen's annual birthday parade, Trooping the Colour, they also have careers outside the palace, and don't receive the same kind of allowances as "working" royals like their cousins Prince William and Prince Harry.
Beatrice, who turns 30 this month, works for a US-based company called Afiniti, while Eugenie, who is 28, is the associate director of an art gallery in London. (That said, it's thought that they also received trust funds from their great-grandmother, the Queen Mother.)
For Eugenie and Beatrice, the pressure of being a princess with a day job is only amplified by social media.
"We want to show people who we are as working, young, royal women, but also not to be afraid of putting ourselves out there," Princess Eugenie, who launched a public profile on Instagram back in March, said.
Her sister Beatrice has a rarely used public Twitter, and a not-so-secret private Instagram handle.
"Nowadays it's so easy to recoil when you see a perfect image on Instagram," Eugenie says. "It's important that it's real. We're real."
('You Might Also Like',)
