Prince Andrew pushed for Princess Eugenie's wedding to match the fanfare of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's nuptials
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Eugenie's guest list of 850 surpassed Harry and Meghan's 600, which Andrew pointed to in an interview
A family friend tells PEOPLE that Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice are determined to maintain their royal status in the wake of their father's latest controversies and arrest
The formerPrince Andrewwas determined that his daughterPrincess Eugenie's royal wedding would be celebrated with the same grandeur asPrince Harry's marriage months before.
Status meant everything to the former Duke of York, and he reinforced its importance as a father, pushing for his daughters,Princess Beatriceand Princess Eugenie, to be styled as "Her Royal Highness" and receive princess titles at birth.
Ahead of Eugenie's marriage toJack Brooksbankin October 2018, Andrew insisted ona full-scale royal wedding at Windsor Castle's St. George's Chapel, complete with security and public spectacle, despite mounting questions about his own standing inside the family.
Sources tell PEOPLEin this week's exclusive cover storythat he bristled at comparisons to Prince Harry andMeghan Markle'sroyal weddingearlier that year, determined that his younger daughter's ceremony not be seen as lesser.
"She's a granddaughter of the Queen — a princess of the blood," says Andrew Lownie, author ofEntitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York. "He believed she should get everything."
Prince Harry and Meghan also wed at St. George's Chapel in May 2018, and Andrew pointedly noted in the run-up to Eugenie's nuptials that her guest list would be larger than her cousin's, underscoring tensions around status and scale.
"It will not be the same as the previous one that was held in May. This is not a public wedding, this is meant to be a family wedding," Andrew said in an interview with ITV'sThis Morning, which broadcast his daughter's big day,The Mirrorreported.
"There'll be a few more people than most people have. There are a few more than Harry had, but that's just the nature of Eugenie and Jack — they've got so many friends that they need a church of that size to fit them all in," he explained.
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Eugenie and her beau had a larger guest list with about 850 people, compared to Prince Harry and Meghan's 600 guests. However, an estimated 1.9 billion people tuned in to watchPrincess Diana's younger son marry his American bride, making it one of the largest televised events in history.
A family friend tells PEOPLE that Eugenie and Beatrice are clinging tight to their royal statusfollowing their father's arrest on Feb. 19and the shadow it has cast over their family.
"They want to hold on to their royal status," a family friend says. "It's their identity."
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When Andrew was arrested at home in Sandringham on his 66th birthday in February, shock spread quickly through a family long insulated from consequence, an institution conditioned to contain damage and a public no longer willing to accept royal privilege as a shield.
What began as a legal crisis forQueen Elizabeth's son —detained for 11 hours on suspicion of misconduct in public office, linked to allegations that he improperly shared information as a trade envoy with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — became something broader: a harsh moment of exposure for the palace culture that protected him, and his family, for decades.
"What's changed now is that the public tolerance for indulgence without accountability has collapsed," says Catherine Mayer, author ofDivide & Rule.
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