The setting was an opulent five-star hotel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, known as much for its grandeur as for its controversial history. The Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh gained notoriety as the focal point of a dramatic 2017 crackdown by the Saudi government, where a sweeping purge targeted hundreds of influential royals, business tycoons, and government ministers.

During this intense campaign, many of Saudi Arabia’s elite were detained, with reports of beatings and torture surfacing, marking the Ritz-Carlton as a backdrop to some of the most unsettling scenes in recent Saudi history. However, in an effort to move past these dark memories, the hotel hosted a decidedly more refined gathering last week—an afternoon tea event featuring Princess Beatrice of York.

The Daily Mail has uncovered details indicating that while the controversy surrounding her father, Prince Andrew, was reaching its peak, Princess Beatrice was in Riyadh engaging in a role reminiscent of those once held by her father. She was the focal point of the esteemed Future Investment Initiative, mingling with some of the wealthiest individuals globally.

But the hotel’s owners had done everything possible to banish such dark memories as they organised an altogether more genteel event last week, billed as ‘afternoon tea with Princess Beatrice of York’. 

The Daily Mail has learned that, while her father’s very public fall from grace was entering its final stages, his oldest daughter was in Riyadh, apparently picking up the sort of role the former Prince Andrew had long performed himself. 

Beatrice was the star turn at the prestigious so-called Future Investment Initiative – and this was just the latest occasion at which the Princess has rubbed shoulders with some of the richest men on the planet. 

And in some quarters this meeting – and others like it, also involving Beatrice, 37 – has raised the question: is the elder daughter of the man formerly known as the Duke of York unofficially resuming her disgraced father’s old role as UK trade envoy? 

As Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he is now officially known, withdraws from public life in shame, has Beatrice – closely followed by her younger sister Eugenie – stepped up to fill the gap? 

Even as far back as 2008, speculation began that the then 19-year-old Beatrice was being prepped for just such a role when Andrew took her on a 14-day tour of Abu Dhabi and Egypt – at the taxpayer’s expense.

The bill for the Met Police bodyguard she had in those days alone was estimated at £40,000 since, because of shift patterns, one set of police officers had to be flown out to replace another. She performed no public engagements.

In 2011 it was reported that Beatrice was given expensive pieces of jewellery on another trip to Abu Dhabi with Andrew by their royal hosts.

Many years later and Beatrice is shown in this exclusive photograph in the Ritz-Carlton lobby last week where she was intently studying her phone in the days running up to the momentous announcement that Andrew would be stripped of his Princely title.

The mother-of-two, in a long black dress with matching pumps, and black bow in her hair, who is involved in software companies, was leading the event for women business leaders.

The invitation cards announced: ‘We cordially invite you to Afternoon Tea hosted by Princess Beatrice of York,’ along with Canadian wellness entrepreneur Ruma Bose, and a US-based organisation called the ‘Lioness Collective’.

How she arrived in Saudi – by scheduled airline or private jet – is not known, nor what fee, if any, she was paid for the gig, but she was treated very much as a VIP by the assembled Royals, energy bosses and high-powered bankers, with podcaster Sunil Sharma posing for a selfie with her in the hotel.

So what exactly is Beatrice’s role at such conferences? The Mail’s enquiries with her co-hosts at the ‘Lioness Collective’ and Ms Bose drew no response.

The Collective’s founder, Scottsdale, Arizona-based Heidi Keele, has a rare talent for punchy rhymes, judging by her website, which asks in typically brash American terms: ‘HAS YOUR HUSTLE LOST ITS MUSCLE?’

Potential members are told: ‘You’ve been grinding, but your efforts are losing steam. What worked before isn’t cutting it anymore, and progress is crawling.

‘You’re stuck in a cycle without results. It’s time to recharge, refocus, and get your hustle back on track. Welcome to The Lioness Collective—a space where drive meets action, and hard work turns into real results.’

Many attendees were curious whether Beatrice would even show up for the Riyadh event, given the tumultuous events occurring back home.

Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson were effectively thrown out on their ears by King Charles after both were exposed as having lied about breaking off contact with billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein in the years following his 2008 conviction and plea deal for organising child prostitution.

Beatrice and Eugenie were said to have been ‘absolutely devastated’ by the latest scandal surrounding their father – accused by the late Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre of having sex with her when she was trafficked and underage, which he has denied.

‘It can’t have been easy fronting the tea party,’ said one conference attendee. ‘No-one would have blamed her if she had pulled out of this high-profile event, but she was determined to grit her teeth and carry on with the show, and I think people respected that.’

What went on behind the closed doors of the women-only tea party in the hotel’s Executive Lounge isn’t known, but judging from a previous outing in Abu Dhabi last year, we can make a fair guess.

Last November, Beatrice was rubbing shoulders with some of the region’s key power players both in public and behind the scenes.

She spoke about artificial intelligence at the Adipec energy conference in the Emirate, where her father is believed to have the exclusive use of a Royal palace at his disposal.

Beatrice also attended a private conference hosted by the UAE minister of industry, Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the day before her public appearance.

She was pictured at the event next to Abu Dhabi crown prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is also the UAE’s president, and an old friend of her father from schooldays at Gordonstoun.

Reporters were banned from the meeting, which included the CEOs of Shell and EDF, the vice president of Microsoft, and former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, now the UN special envoy for climate action.

In a public interview on stage, Beatrice made sure she hit her key points, rattling away pleasantly and fluently about ‘collaboration’, ‘moving the needle’, ‘expanding the conversation’ and ‘asking questions’.

US journalist Hadley Gamble, who conducted the interview, told the Mail on Sunday: ‘There was a general feeling that Beatrice was an unofficial ambassador for the UK.’ She added: ‘Beatrice was quite literally in the inner circle at a gathering of global energy CEOs, top finance guys and policy makers.’

In the months before, Princess Beatrice – sometimes accompanied by her art gallery executive sister Eugenie, 35 — has made several visits to the region, but is she flying the flag for Britain, or feathering her own nest?

In previous years when Beatrice accompanied her father, the lines were always blurred, and many people couldn’t help but notice that many of Andrew’s official trips, whether as the official UK trade envoy or afterwards, often coincided with the weekends of F1 Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi or Bahrain.

A few months before he was forced to stand down as Trade Envoy in 2011, the public were given a rare insight into what the diplomats called on to help arrange Andrew’s trips really thought of him.

A bombshell letter from former UK Ambassador to Qatar and Tunisia, Stephen Day, an ex-head of the Foreign Office’s Middle East section, was leaked.

He told government ministers that Andrew should be sacked ‘as soon as possible’ because he was doing ‘serious damage’ to the Royal Family and Britain.

Mr Day said the Prince was the ‘worst person’ to deploy in countries such as Qatar, where his presence was seen as ‘crass’.

He also alleged that Andrew had held a ‘worrying’ private meeting with Col Gaddafi three years earlier at the home of Sakher el–Materi, the son–in-law of the recently ousted Tunisian president, and described by Mr Day as ‘the worst of all the crooks in the presidential family’.

Andrew’s reign as trade envoy came to an ignominious end three months later, but he then morphed into the host of ‘Pitch@Palace’, helping young entrepreneurs link up with potential investors.

This, too, then became an excuse for foreign jaunts, with versions in Africa, China, Australia, the UAE, Latin America and Singapore. While the organisation helped launch several innovative new start-ups, Andrew’s interview with the Sunday Times, in which he described himself as ‘an ideas factory’, didn’t exactly win over his interviewer, John Arlidge.

He told Andrew’s biographer Andrew Lownie in his book Entitled: ‘He was, without question, the most arrogant and thoughtless public figure I have ever interviewed.

‘Everything he should have done, he didn’t do, and everything he shouldn’t have done, he did do.’

Three years later, the travelling Yorks were still on the road, this time in Abu Dhabi, again at taxpayers’ expense.

Andrew and Beatrice accompanied by her American boyfriend at the time, Dave Clark, watched Lewis Hamilton claim victory the day after father and daughter unveiled two plaques at a local British school, joined by the British Ambassador and the UAE’s culture minister.

Last year Eugenie was spotted in Doha, Qatar, where she visited the M7 art centre to see the Ellsworth Kelly exhibition – the first Middle Eastern retrospective of the artist’s work.

The Princesses’ mother, Sarah Ferguson told the Mail around that time that her daughters were passionately driven by the causes they hold dear.

‘Beatrice and Eugenie are out there doing the work,’ she said. ‘Eugenie does a lot with The Anti-Slavery Collective, Beatrice does an enormous amount in technology and with dyslexia and really believes in humanity in the workplace, with compassion.’

To be fair to Beatrice and Eugenie they also stepped up to help fulfil official Royal engagements during the Princess of Wales’ illness. In May 2024, they both attended a garden party at Buckingham Palace to support William, when Kate could not be present. They were joined by their cousins, Zara Tindall and Peter Philips.

Earlier this year, Beatrice was appointed as the director of Purpose Economy Intelligence, Ltd., along with Spanish executive Luis Alvarado Martinez. They each obtained a 45 percent share of the company with the remaining 10 percent held by Beatrice’s private secretary, Olivia Horsley.

Beatrice would serve as the director for the company which focuses on developing software for businesses and homes and offering management consulting services.

Her own company, BY-EQ, had a very good year, boosting its profits spectacularly between 2023 and last year.

In its first year, it reported a modest £39,000 profit, but recent accounts showed that its earnings in 2024 were close to £500,000.

After bills of £214,615, Beatrice retained £274,846 in accumulated profits.

Not bad for a company with only one director, a three-page website, and no employees at all, according to Companies House.

But what exactly does BY-EQ (which stands for Beatrice York – Emotional Quotient) do?

At least the website can answer that one: ‘By combining her industry experience with her long standing commitments to philanthropy and a belief that businesses can and should have a positive impact, Beatrice created BY–EQ to bring these sectors together.

‘BY–EQ works with stakeholders to deliver purpose focused initiatives.’

The website offers no clues as to who Beatrice’s stakeholders might be.

Since June of this year, she has listed herself as strategic advisor at US tech giant Afiniti, rather than the vice-president she previously was.

As for her other half, Italian Count Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi his companies, according to the publicity, at least, are renovating in London, New York City, Sydney and Dubai, and the Banda Property website is full of sumptuous videos of swanky minimalist pads decorated in tones of beige and brown.

They even took on the refurbishment of a Gulfstream 550 private jet recently.

Edoardo, 41, is director of 11 firms listed at Companies House, with five of them still active and the other six dissolved.

According to records filed at Companies House, only one, Banda Limited, made a profit of £246,849 in 2024 compared to £247,071 the previous year.

The others had negative balance sheets. Banda’s number of employees had risen by three in the year to 48.

According to the company’s LinkedIn page, their interior design team ‘Can craft environments for a beautiful and functional life, with a design that extends beyond to encompass every facet of a property’s story.’

They also offer a private client search team ‘able to access London’s most desirable homes before they come to market’.

Then there’s the design and build team offering architecture and project management skills. ,

Or, as the website pithily sums it all up in what could even be a motto for the new generation of the House of York:

‘Source. Plan. Deliver. Finesse. Globally’.

Princess Beatrice was contacted for comment.