Her wisdom and judgement were soon needed much closer to home. Ever since ‘her strength and stay’ Prince Philip had retired, her second son Prince Andrew had done his best to make up for his father’s absence. He accompanied his mother to church on Sundays and ensured that his daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, kept in contact.
In her eyes, Andrew had, in times of crisis, shown qualities of courage and leadership, notably during the Falklands conflict and the Windsor Castle fire. Though he had a reputation for being arrogant, his loyalty to the Sovereign was unswerving. She appreciated his dogged support, even if his judgement was somewhat simplistic. During the week of Diana’s funeral, for instance, when passions were running hot inside Balmoral about how to deal with the situation, the prince declared to a roomful of warring palace advisers, ‘The Queen is the Queen. You can’t speak to her like that!’ meaning that her view should be accepted without question.
Though he had become a reassuring and welcome presence, distracting his mother from her two grandsons at war, his own issues soon dominated the royal agenda. Try as he might, he could not lay to rest his association with the banker and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Matters became much worse when, in August 2019, while awaiting trial on sex tracking charges, Epstein committed suicide in a cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.
One of his most prominent and persistent accusers was Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who alleged that when she was seventeen years old Epstein had forced her to have sex with his friends, including Prince Andrew on three separate occasions. As proof of having met him, she released a photograph that showed a smiling prince with his arm around her at Ghislaine Maxwell’s London home. While the Duke of York denied having had any sexual contact with Giuffre, the negative headlines continued.
In November 2019, following discussions with his lawyers and private secretary Amanda Thirsk, Andrew decided to consider giving an extended interview to the BBC presenter Emily Maitlis on a specially recorded edition of Newsnight, the popular current-affairs programme. When the Newsnight team came to the palace to make their final pitch, Andrew stated that he must ‘seek approval from higher up’.
The final decision was to be taken by the Queen and Prince Charles, who were both nervous about the possible fallout. His mother knew from past experience with her family, notably Prince Charles’s prime-time confession of adultery in Charles: The Private Man, the Public Role and Diana’s appearance on Panorama, that royalty did not fare well on TV. However, following internal communications, the Queen and the Prince of Wales were sufficiently reassured to give the interview the go-ahead.
After the fifty-minute grilling by Maitlis, Andrew thought the conversation, which had taken place in a ballroom at Buckingham Palace, had gone well and called the Queen to tell her: ‘Mission accomplished.’ He imagined it to be such a success that, after filming, he took the Newsnight team on a tour of the palace.
The cacophony of criticism that immediately followed the broadcast soon stilled that wrong-headed belief. Andrew’s public cross-examination was deemed a disaster; ‘Car crash TV’ was one of the kinder descriptions. The prince didn’t appear to regret his relationship with Epstein nor did he express any sympathy for the disgraced banker’s victims, even though he was given ample opportunity to do so. Although the Queen was said to be horrified, for once she too came into the firing line for allowing Andrew to proceed with an interview that not only wrecked his reputation but also damaged the standing of the monarchy. ‘Prince Andrew’s TV calamity suggests Queen is losing her grip on “the firm”’ was the headline in The Times, the Establishment’s paper of record.
Her advanced age, the absence of Prince Philip – the family ‘enforcer’ – from the fray and the Queen’s fondness for Andrew were suggested as factors contributing to the debacle. However, the fact that the prince had not been able to provide a convincing reason for his continued friendship with the millionaire paedophile, or explain away the photo that showed his arm around Giuffre’s waist after he stated that he could not remember meeting her, proved damning. Moreover, his breezy responses and unreflective manner suggested a man totally out of touch with the #MeToo generation.
As charities, colleges, businesses and other organisations with associations to the prince began to wash their hands of him, within days of the November broadcast the Duke of York became the first member of the Royal Family in history to be forced to retire from royal duties. He made the decision following crisis talks with the Queen and Prince Charles, who was consulted during a tour of New Zealand.
As far as the Queen was concerned, those last few days had compelled her to choose between the demands of her family and the institution they served. Andrew’s historic statement announcing his departure was released just a few minutes before the Monarch arrived at Chatham House, where she was to present her friend Sir David Attenborough with an international award regarding his work highlighting plastic pollution in the world’s oceans.
Nothing in her demeanour suggested anything other than delight at honouring the distinguished naturalist and broadcaster. She smiled broadly and as she signed the visitors’ book she mischievously asked for the date. It was 20 November, her seventy-second wedding anniversary. ‘Oh, I knew that,’ she deadpanned. No one present would have had an inkling that just a few minutes before, she had been party to ousting her son from the front ranks of the Royal Family.
She demonstrated that she remained ruthless when necessary in order to protect the institution to which she had sacrificed her whole life. Andrew was a problem, and she and her eldest son had moved swiftly to exorcise him from the public realm. Andrew now had the rest of his life to reflect on his folly. though he expressed regret for his ‘ill-judged association’ with Epstein in his statement, and declared ‘I deeply sympathise with everyone who has been affected’, it was all too little too late.
Matters only got worse for the disgraced duke. After a month-long trial in December 2021, his friend Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty of sex tracking, while in January 2022 he lost his bid to have Virginia Giuffre’s case against him thrown out. Days later he was, with the Queen’s ‘approval and agreement’, stripped of his royal patronages and military titles, leaving him to fight the court case as a private person. The case was promptly settled out of court.
Over the past 40 years, I’ve written bestselling books about Princess Diana, The Queen, Wallis Simpson, Meghan Markle and many others. You can find all of them to buy here.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.