Prince Andrew takes to Twitter over royal storm in teacup

Prince Andrew with daughters Eugenie, left, and Beatrice. Photo / WireImage

Prince Andrew has angrily denied there is any rift between him and Prince Charles over the status of his daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.

The Duke of York, angered at recent press reports that he wants his daughters to have enhanced public roles and their future husbands to be given earldoms, said the stories were "completely made up".

The sixth in line to the throne wrote and personally tweeted the statement via his official Twitter account.

He said he had taken the rare step of issuing a statement in his own name "to terminate further speculation and innuendo".

"It is a complete fabrication to suggest I have asked for any future husbands of the princesses to have titles.

"There is no truth to the story that there could be a split between the Prince of Wales and I over my daughters' participation as members of the royal family and any continued speculation is pointless."

Rather than wanting more public roles for the Princesses, he said he wanted them to be "modern working young women who happen to be members of the royal family".

His intervention came just hours after his former wife, Sarah, made a public plea to "stop bullying the York family".

As her daughters became patrons of the Teenage Cancer Trust, she called their "hard work" an example of "good parenting".

The Duchess of York and the two princesses visited a specialist teen cancer unit in London to mark the occasion, meeting young people with the disease.

The Duchess said: "Both the Duke and myself, we could not be more proud of this moment because these are two girls that work so hard in their own careers, have taken time off today to spread the word of teen cancer, which is so important, and then go back to work."

She went on: "Let's focus more on this and less on tittle-tattle gossip. Stop bullying the York family, please."

It comes after singer Ed Sheeran disclosed that Beatrice slashed his cheek with a ceremonial sword as she pretended to knight singer James Blunt at a dinner party.

Both princesses have faced criticism over their fondness for holidays: in 15 months, Eugenie took eight holidays, from Burma to California.

In the year to December 2015, Beatrice managed 18 trips, to places including the Caribbean, Verbier, Abu Dhabi, Rome, Ibiza and Florida.