Queen Elizabeth II had to step in to stop her sons, Prince Charles and Prince Andrew, from fighting over which bathroom they could use at her country mansion of Sandringham.
The incident is said to have taken place at the Norfolk stately home at Christmas in 1999, when Andrew was asked to remove his toiletries from a bathroom Charles wanted to use. The former reportedly refused.
“We were told not to move anything and not to touch anything in that bathroom because there was an ‘ongoing situation',” former Buckingham Palace maid Janette McGowan told newspaper The Sun.
The maid had travelled to the estate with the royal family as part of their mobile household of employees and other servants.
“When members of the royal family travel to Sandringham they are each allocated rooms and a bathroom," McGowan explained. “But Prince Andrew took the bathroom that was allocated for the Prince of Wales and he wouldn’t budge and refused to take his stuff out of it. It turned into a bizarre stand-off."
Andrew only backed down after being told off by his mum.
“In the end the queen herself had to intervene to defuse the situation. She actually had to have words with Andrew and say to him that he had to use the other bathroom and that was when he finally backed down," McGowan recalled. “He was almost 40 at the time. It was very odd behaviour for someone of that age."
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There was "nothing special" about the bathrooms, she said, offering that Andrew was making a stink about precedence because he thought that his elder brother, the Prince of Wales, was considered to be “superior” to him.
“There was a long corridor with four bedrooms and four separate bathrooms," McGowan recounted. "The rooms were on the right-hand side and the corresponding bathrooms were on the left-hand side, opposite each room."
“Prince Andrew had arrived first and he put his things in the bathroom that he shouldn’t have done. It wasn’t the one opposite his room, which is what made it so bizarre, there was nothing special about the bathroom. It was just a good old sibling row.”
The retired household servant said the incident gave her a very low opinion of the Duke of York, then 39.
“I think it was very petulant. He’s very spoiled with regards to his own rights," McGowan said. “He didn’t like the fact that his brother was superior to him with regards to things being allocated to him. Apparently he always had to have the first pick of everything.”