Estate accommodating royal maintains (7)
I believe the answer is:
asserts
'maintains' is the definition.
('assert' can be a synonym of 'maintain')
'estate accommodating royal' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'royal' could be 'er' (abbreviation for Elizabeth Regina) and 'er' is located in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for asserts that I've seen before include "Declares to be true" , "States firmly" , "States categorically" , "States confidently and forcefully" .)
