Paola Frankopan has separated from the Duke of Kent's son, Lord Nicholas Windsor, according to new claims.
Lady Nicholas Windsor notably did not attend her former mother-in-law, Katharine, Duchess of Kent's funeral earlier this week.
A friend of the family said: “It’s very sad, but the couple have been separated for some time.
“They no longer attend family events together.”
Duke of Kent's son 'splits from wife' 19 years after first Catholic Royal Family wedding
|PA
They continued to tell the Mail: “Both are very conservative and dislike divorce, so apparently they will never actually get divorced.”
GB News has approached Buckingham Palace for comment.
Senior members of the Royal Family, including King Charles and the Prince and Princess of Wales, attended the Duchess of Kent’s funeral at Westminster Cathedral on Tuesday.
Prince Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, also made surprise appearances.
Paola Frankopan pictured with her husband in 2011
|GETTY
The Duchess of Edinburgh attended without her husband, Prince Edward, as the Duke of Edinburgh was in Papua New Guinea at the time.
Lady Nicholas was not present, which raised several questions. Lord Nicholas, 55, and Ms Frankopan, 56, married in 2006.
It was the first Roman Catholic wedding of a member of the Royal Family since the reign of Queen Mary I in the 16th century and the first to be held in Vatican City State.
They have three sons, Albert, Leopold and Louis. An Early Day Motion in the House of Commons welcomed the baptism of Albert as the first royal child to be baptised a Catholic since 1688.
Lord Nicholas Windsor pictured at his mother's funeral earlier this week
|GETTY
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Lord Nicholas Windsor with his family members at the funeral
|REUTERS
Lord Nicholas converted to Roman Catholicism in 2001 and, as a result, forfeited his place in the line of succession to the throne.
In 2010, he wrote about abortion in the American journal First Things, calling it “the single most grievous moral deficit in contemporary life”.
Furthermore, he urged “a new abolitionism for Europe” in which abortion, like the slave trade, could be abolished.
While the threat of terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda called for “robust and, where necessary, lethal response,” he wrote that “these are not threats that appear existential and have not as yet provoked a real sense of public crisis.”
