The stripping of the former Duke of York’s title as a royal prince is widely viewed in Britain as coming a decade too late, says the writer. — Getty Images/TNS
KING Charles III’s decision to strip his brother, the former Duke of York, of his last title as a royal prince is widely viewed in Britain as coming a decade too late.
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, as he now becomes, has been bringing shame on the royal family for so long that he should have been exiled years ago.
It is, of course, Andrew’s links to disgraced paedophile Jeffrey Epstein that have precipitated this scandal. Both he and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, with whom he still lives in erratic partnership, accepted flights, hospitality and favours from Epstein – in addition to Andrew’s notorious relationship with Virginia Guiffre and allegedly other girls in Epstein’s gilded brothel.
This squalid story should properly be viewed in a wider context: of the British royal family’s historic sense of entitlement.
This has caused even its junior members for centuries to pursue ill-judged friendships with rich and often disreputable people, who are eager to entertain and fund princelings in pursuit of their own respectability and advancement.
As Prince of Wales, King Charles borrowed yachts from controversial Greek tycoons such as John Latsis and Theodore Angelopoulos, and accepted cash for his favourite causes from Arab princes whose affairs did not bear scrutiny.
Queen Elizabeth II regularly entertained and was entertained by Middle Eastern potentates who shared her passion for horses.
She attended the Royal Windsor Horse Show in company with the late businessman Mohammed Fayed, then-owner of Harrods, who even in his lifetime was widely recognised as a scoundrel and sexual predator.
Lesser royals have regularly featured in the news as accepting hospitality from controversial business figures. Many young royal offspring including Prince Anne’s daughter Zara Phillips and her husband Mike Tindall have participated in richly rewarded advertising and promotional activities.
During World War II, when the former King Edward VIII, who had renounced the throne in 1936, was exiled as governor of the Bahamas, the security services expressed alarm about his links to pro-Nazi figures with whom he consorted on the islands.
The story is always the same, as it remains today with Andrew Windsor: Those who are born royal demand a standard of living that their incomes cannot support. They are thus driven to exploit their family. Andrew Windsor repeatedly entertained Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and even Harvey Weinstein at British royal residences.
How serious is the Andrew crisis, which dominated British front pages, for the monarchy as an institution?
The evidence is overwhelming that Andrew has lied and lied again about the length and closeness of his and his ex-wife’s relationships with Epstein.
Moreover, it is obvious that the late Queen Elizabeth II, who always treated Andrew as her favourite child, indulged his excesses, both by providing cash to him and also refusing to blow the whistle when he entertained disreputable and even criminal friends at Buckingham Palace and other royal residences.
Senior royal staffers have told me over many years that whenever they attempted to persuade the Queen that it was vital to check Andrew’s excesses, she refused to act.
Today, further troubling issues swirl around King Charles, who is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.
Attempts to reconcile him with his younger son, Prince Harry, who lives in voluntary exile in California with his wife Meghan, have been unsuccessful.
In considerable part, the difficulties derive from the fact that whenever Harry meets any member of the royal family, he almost invariably afterwards tells the world what was said.
The king cannot endure further indiscretions and indeed abuse from his son, following so much that has already been published under Harry’s name. Yet much of the public, on both sides of the Atlantic, finds it hard to understand and sympathise with the king’s alienation from his son, which thus inflicts harm upon the family’s image.
Next up is the “palace overload” problem.
When Queen Elizabeth died, there was a widespread expectation that the incoming king would downsize the family’s lavish portfolio of residences, both state and private. Instead, however, the opposite has happened. Charles’s property holdings are now larger than were his mother’s.
Nobody doubts that King Charles is a well-intentioned man, deeply committed to good causes, foremost among which are climate change and the environment.
The question in some of our minds is whether, as Britain slips deeper into economic woe, the king’s subjects will continue to indulge both his private extravagance and the obsessive secrecy that shrouds the royal finances.
A little-known detail about the origins of Britain’s royal wealth, beyond property seized and purchased over centuries, is that in the 19th century, Queen Victoria was given an absurdly large income by the government.
She spent little of this money during decades of seclusion after the death of her beloved husband Albert. That nest egg, protected from taxation for a century and a half, has since grown into a huge fortune at the disposal of Charles and Camilla, about which we are allowed to know almost nothing.
The British monarchy, still ringfenced from most of the realities that the rest of us take for granted, looks ever more archaic and extravagant. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s monstrous conduct, and the royal family’s role in protecting him for decades from its consequences, is rocking the throne.
My personal guess is that somehow the crown will come through. But it has to change. The rotten apples, of whom Andrew is by far the rottenest, must be purged. The financial excesses must be curbed, the property portfolio slashed. The mystique of royalty must be preserved, but windows must be thrown open against its obsessive secrecy.
We are fortunate enough to have a good king. But Charles heads an institution that appears vulnerable to winds of change, even if US president Donald Trump goes weak at the knees whenever he gets to have dinner at Windsor castle. — Bloomberg Opinion/TNS
Military historian and journalist Max Hastings is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. The views expressed here are solely his own.
