Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice are set to ditch their parents, Prince Andrew and Fergie, with "Bea" blithely joining the official royal Christmas in Sandringham, to which the shamed prince and his ex-wife have been uninvited.

This development, reported by the Daily Mail, has thrown the royal Christmas message of family unity into an extraordinary state of confusion.

Andrew's not invited, but his kids are? Aren't the royals meant to bring people together? How does splitting up a family on Christmas Day fit into that template?

Christmas is the royals' most important PR exercise of the year. Ever since Queen Victoria invited the Illustrated London News into her not-so-humble abode to admire the decorated treetop that her beloved consort, Prince Albert, had dragged into the ballroom, thereby triggering a global fad for Christmas trees that has lasted well over a century and counting, the royals have sought to portray themselves as a model family at Christmas. They sell themselves at this time of year as hard as any brand keen to cash in on the festive vibes.

However, not for the first time, it's all gone down the tubes this year. Also, not for the first time, the cause of all the trouble is Prince Andrew, a man who apparently never heard of the concept of ceasing to dig when in a hole.

Incredibly, Andrew managed to somehow make a new BFF of a rich Chinese spy whose briefing notes specified that he was "desperate" and would "grab onto anything."

The affair is a disaster for King Charles, whose weakness and ineffectiveness is now so obvious that even this weekend's tsunami of end-of-year flattery in the extraordinarily supine U.K. papers won't be able to hide it.

Sure, Andrew is venal and an idiot but Charles looks like a dupe, which is arguably worse. Just weeks before the spy scandal exploded, the king's Keeper of the Privy Purse (which sounds better than "accountant") cleared Andrew's sources of funding. This determination, which has now been very publicly revealed as flawed, gave the king a pretext to say Andrew could continue living in his palatial home, Royal Lodge.

The bigger question is: why, after the late Queen Elizabeth broke her own heart by expelling her idiot, favorite son from the royals, did the king expend so much political capital on bringing him back into the royal family?

How could the king not see what the whole world saw in that BBC interview, that a man stupid enough to defend a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein is not a good fellow to have around, even if he is your brother?

The Daily Beast reported exclusively this week that Charles may not have to worry about the problem much more: Andrew, who has always liked the Middle East, where royals can do whatever they want without a shred of accountability or scrutiny, is planning to relocate there.

Maybe Beatrice and Eugenie can ask the king if Andrew can keep the lease to Royal Lodge to bequeath to them, as he has always hoped to do, if they can deliver the king a terrific Christmas present; the promise that their father won't ever set foot in the U.K. again without the monarch's express permission.

Also not helping matters: The Sunday Times' revelation today that Charles also wined and dined some shady rich Chinese guys. Oops!

It was a typically courageous remark from the monarch whose aides said Friday that his cancer treatment will continue into 2025.

Official sources tried to characterize the ongoing radiotherapy as "encouraging" and "positive," and said the direction of his treatment was "good news."

The Daily Beast has consistently reported on the fact that Charles' cancer has dramatically changed the expectations of royal planners and the behavior of insiders, including his heir.

The reality is that Charles' cancer -- still unspecified -- is now being managed as a long-term condition. While his schedule of public duties, including commitments over Christmas, continues -- and hats off to him for being the second hardest working royal in terms of public engagements this year -- Charles, 76, and Camilla, 77, are no spring chickens.

Some of her friends doubt that the much-flagged return to international travel next year is something she considers remotely sensible after being knocked out by a brutal bout of pneumonia after an official trip to Australia and Samoa earlier this year.

Palace spinners initially tried to minimize it as a "nasty bug" before Camilla went dramatically off-message and said she had actually contracted pneumonia.

She could hardly have found a more public way of saying what one of her friends recently told The Daily Beast: "At 77, to be shipped off to the other side of the world to shake hands with thousands of people when your husband has cancer is, quite frankly, too much to ask. Camilla would never complain, and of course she wanted to support her husband, but she never should have been put in that situation. And she got pneumonia as a result. I hope this makes the mandarins sit up and take notice."

Apparently it has; the full schedule of international travel next year will probably include trips as far afield as ... Italy and Poland.