At long last Prince Andrew has grasped that his days as a prominent member of the Royal Family are utterly and completely over.
He has done this not because he wanted to, but because an independent Press, led by The Mail on Sunday, has repeatedly revealed that his behaviour has fallen well below the standards which royal status demands.
He has of course struggled and wriggled against this, because a large part of his problem has been an inability to grasp that he has gone too far, or to understand the severity of the charges against him.
Alas, this does not mean the problem is over. The King has acted firmly, following the deeply embarrassing email this newspaper last week revealed, from which it was clear that Andrew had given a misleading account of his dealings with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, now dead. ‘We’re in this together’, he told Epstein. And he expressed a wish to ‘play some more soon’.
He sent this missive a day after this newspaper first published the infamous picture of the prince with his alleged teenage sex victim, Virginia Giuffre.
Yet he had maintained that by then he had broken contact with the sordid American financier. Those who until then had wished to believe Prince Andrew had been unfairly treated could no longer easily hold to that view.
It is surely quite unacceptable for a royal prince, heir to almost ten centuries of monarchy, even to consort with such a person as Epstein. Now more revelations from beyond the grave are promised from the late Ms Giuffre, who Prince Andrew still claims he did not meet.
The inrushing tide of scandal has swept aside Prince Andrew’s attempted defences as if they were so many sandcastles. It seems never to stop. How much worse can all this get? Every effort to bring it to an end has deepened and widened the mess.
Prince Andrew at the Order of the Garter service in 2019 outside St George’s Chapel in Windsor. At long last Prince Andrew has grasped that his days as a prominent member of the Royal Family are utterly and completely over
Jeffrey Epstein in 2017. It is surely quite unacceptable for a royal prince, heir to almost ten centuries of monarchy, even to consort with such a person as Epstein
We have had to endure an inept and entitled performance in a TV interview, a legal settlement in which he handed over millions of pounds of royal money while maintaining that he had done nothing to justify such a payment, and now yet another line of defence is crumbling in public.
There are now suggestions that the prince tried to use his protection officer to initiate inquiries into Ms Giuffre’s past, an outrageous abuse of privilege.
An interrogation by the FBI, a terrible blow to royal and British prestige, still remains an awful possibility.
How did we get into such a mess? Can more be done to extricate the Crown from it?
For many, especially those who remember Andrew’s undoubted bravery in the Falklands war and his joyous return from the battle, the whole thing is tinged with sadness that the Queen’s favourite son should have fallen so low. Many have been longing it would stop. But it has not, because there is, it seems, always a little more to tell.
Who would be sure now that more embarrassing discoveries will not come to light? There is another, even deeper problem.
Andrew is not a politician or a showbusiness figure. He cannot be dismissed from being the late Queen’s son, nor can he resign from that position.
His daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, are likewise unalterably the late Queen’s grandchildren. They are also the King’s nieces. The sins of their father cannot be visited on them without a great deal of unfairness.
Andrew and Sarah Ferguson at the Duchess of York’s funeral earlier this year. The King’s removal of Andrew’s lesser titles, and the prince’s exclusion from royal gatherings, is necessary and right, but may not be enough
And these problems arise from the fact that we have – in our view wisely – chosen to keep a hereditary monarchy.
Sometimes this system throws up people wonderfully fitted to reign and to enjoy royal status, the best example being the late Queen Elizabeth II.
At other times the outcome is not so satisfactory. The problem is worst for the ‘spares’, the surplus siblings who must continue to live in a public bubble because the magic of monarchy never ceases to fascinate us.
The King’s removal of Andrew’s lesser titles, and the prince’s exclusion from royal gatherings, is necessary and right, but may not be enough. The person who must now do most to make matters tolerable is Andrew himself. We hope he can and we hope he does.
