For Prince Andrew, a steady fall from grace ends in a hard landing

By Mark Landler

LONDON — When Prince Andrew issued a terse statement Friday (17) confirming that he would stop using his title, the Duke of York, it seemed like a definitive bid to draw a line under a scandal that has haunted the British royal family for a decade. Yet in some ways, it was just another step in a long march of shame.

With each new sordid detail or explosive accusation about his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the royal family has chipped away at Andrew’s gilded veneer. He was banished from public life in 2019, and stripped of his honorary military titles and the honorific ‘His Royal Highness’ in 2022.

Losing the Duke of York title is a particularly bitter blow, royal watchers say, because it dates to the 14th century and is traditionally bestowed on the second sons of monarchs. It has also been Andrew’s primary calling card in the restless life he has pursued since his glamorous youth as a war hero and eligible bachelor.

Now 65 and living in isolation in a stately house on the Windsor estate, west of London, Andrew remains a prince — that status stems from being the offspring of a sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II — but he is otherwise a pariah. Buckingham Palace made clear he was not welcome at the family’s Christmas gathering.

“The pressure on the monarchy to ostracize Andrew simply became too much,” said Ed Owens, a historian who writes about the royal family. “At a time when opinion polling reveals a subtle but steady drop in support for the monarchy, the king and his heir have finally taken firm action against Andrew to try and stem the bleeding.”

Owens was referring to King Charles III, with whom Andrew consulted before making his announcement, and to the king’s eldest son, Prince William. As heir to the throne, Owens said, William would have been involved in the deliberations that led to a further downgrade of his uncle’s royal status.

Even by Andrew’s scandal-tinged standards, the last week brought a parade of damaging accusations, most vividly in a new memoir by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a victim of Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, who accused the prince of raping her when she was a teenager — an accusation he denies.

Giuffre died by suicide in Australia in April, but her book, ‘Nobody’s Girl’, which will be published in the United States on Tuesday (21) and has been excerpted in the British press, is opening Andrew to fresh public opprobrium. Among the details, Giuffre described a sexual encounter, during which she wrote, “he was particularly attentive to my feet, caressing my toes and licking my arches”.

In a statement, Giuffre’s family said Andrew’s surrender of his title was “vindication for our sister and survivors everywhere”.

On Friday, Andrew said, “I vigorously deny the accusations against me.” In giving up the use of his Duke of York title, he said, “I have decided, as I always have, to put duty to my family and country first”.

Two British papers reported last week that Andrew sent Epstein a reassuring email in 2011, a year after he claimed in a 2019 interview with the BBC that he had severed all contact with his friend. In the email, published by The Mail on Sunday and The Sun on Sunday, he wrote to Epstein, “We are in this together.” The New York Times has not independently verified the email.

The disclosure that another prominent Briton, Peter Mandelson, had been in touch with Epstein longer than publicly known led to Mandelson’s swift dismissal in September as Britain’s ambassador to Washington. Britain differs from the United States in that the Epstein affair has yet to result in comparable American casualties.

Andrew has even been drawn into a scandal involving Chinese spying efforts in Britain, with reports in The Times of London and The Daily Telegraph, based on court documents, that he met on multiple occasions with Cai Qi, a senior Chinese official who is close to China’s president, Xi Jinping.

Cai is believed by prosecutors to have received information collected by two British men who worked with members of the British Parliament active in Chinese affairs. Prosecutors dropped a spying case against the two men, which has become a political headache for Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

In December, a British immigration court upheld a decision by the government to bar from the country a Chinese man, Yang Tengbo, who was a “close confidant” of Andrew’s, on national security grounds. The prince said at the time that he “ceased all contact” with Yang after government officials raised concerns, adding that the two had “discussed nothing of a sensitive nature”.

But the court ruling threw an unflattering spotlight on Andrew’s diminished status. It cited a 2021 document taken from Yang’s cellphone that discussed talking points for a call between him and the prince. The document suggested that Andrew was eager for dealmaking opportunities in China.

“Really important not to set too high expectations,” the document said. “He is in a desperate situation and will grab onto anything.”

The palace’s decision to put out word that Andrew would be banished from its Christmas celebrations, two people with knowledge of the royal family said, was calculated in part to demonstrate that he does not have privileged access to royals like Charles or William. That would discourage outsiders from seeking to use Andrew as a conduit to senior members of the family.

Of all the scandals shadowing the prince, these people said, the publication of the email from Andrew to Epstein might have been the most damning. It exposed the account he gave to Emily Maitlis, a former BBC journalist on the program ‘Newsnight’ in 2019, as dishonest.

The palace has long since stopped defending him. In 2022, when a judge ruled that Giuffre’s sexual abuse lawsuit against him could go forward, the palace said he would be “defending this case as a private citizen”.

When the queen was alive, Andrew still had one influential backer. Elizabeth helped finance the undisclosed payment he made to Giuffre to settle her lawsuit, which he did without admitting guilt. But after his mother died in September 2022, Andrew’s position became more precarious.

Owens said the family’s latest action against Andrew reflects its awareness that public support for the monarchy is gradually ebbing. In 2023, a poll of British social attitudes by the National Centre for Social Research found that 54% of people surveyed said it was “very” or “quite important” for Britain to have a monarchy, compared with 86% in 1983.

“This wider context is key,” Owens said, “and it begs the question whether the monarchy will now also address the other major point of public concern: the opaque nature of the royal finances.”

-New York Times