PENZANCE, England — Prince Andrew is in internal exile in Windsor, 20 miles west of London. Last week a judge in Manhattan ruled that a lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre, a woman who accused Andrew of sexually assaulting her in 2001, when she was 17 and was, she said, trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, could proceed. (Andrew has denied the accusations.) A day later, Buckingham Palace issued a statement effectively banishing him from royal life.
It was done with economy — just 42 words: “With the queen’s approval and agreement, the Duke of York’s military affiliations and royal patronages have been returned to the queen. The Duke of York will continue not to undertake any public duties and is defending this case as a private citizen.” He has lost the right to use the special abbreviation H.R.H. (His Royal Highness) in an official capacity, and he will not appear this summer on the Buckingham Palace balcony to celebrate his mother’s Platinum Jubilee, marking her 70 years as queen.
As he sits in front of the TV — he’s apparently fond of TV — jobless and divorced and with a collection of carefully arranged cuddly bears, I wonder if Andrew should watch “The Crown.” Specifically, the scene in the first season when Queen Mary tells her granddaughter Elizabeth II what to do when her private and public selves conflict: “The crown must win,” says the old queen to the young. “Must always win.” Or, as pertinently, he could turn over and watch “The Godfather,” in which Michael Corleone (Prince Charles?) tells his brother Sonny (Andrew?): “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.” He could also watch “The Godfather: Part II,” in which Michael (Charles) tells Fredo (Andrew again): “You’re still my brother!” We know what happens next.
The members of the royal family call themselves the Firm. It is a joke masking a truth. The crown is a business. That is why the queen’s second son has been exiled without trial or conviction: for the business. They may have a mid-20th-century bourgeois glamour — hats, flowers, doilies — but that is icing sugar, mere mirroring of their most devoted fans. Their business is power, and they have soaring archives and long memories.
They saw the Capets, Bonapartes, Romanovs, Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns lose their thrones to bad governance, scandal, revolution and war. Some of them — though seemingly not Andrew — are self-aware enough to understand that they are now a curio and their survival depends on fumes of sentiment and nostalgia, their own wits and immaculate behavior day to day. They are pragmatic, realistic and sensitive to public opinion. A possible sex offender doesn’t look good on a commemorative tea towel. Nor does the publication of photographs of Mr. Epstein and his friend Ghislaine Maxwell, recently convicted of sex trafficking, at the queen’s Balmoral Castle.
Charles has planned for years to slim down the monarchy because its support is a mile wide but an inch thick. This crisis merely accelerated it.
Initially, Andrew made the family look ridiculous. He gave a puzzled broadcast interview in 2019, saying he could not have met Ms. Giuffre because he was in a pizza restaurant in Woking, a small town near Windsor, that day. (“Going to Pizza Express in Woking is an unusual thing for me to do,” he said. “And I remember it weirdly distinctly.”) He said he could not have danced with Ms. Giuffre sweatily at a nightclub, as she claims, “because I had suffered an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at” — at this his voice deepened, and he preened at his new seriousness — “and it was almost impossible for me to sweat.”
He is not the first fool to be born in a palace, but this time the fool was on television. When, last week, he made it look as if the royal family was protecting someone accused of sexual assault the crown acted swiftly.
If “The Godfather” does not explain his predicament to him, Andrew could read the history of his own family. He would learn that exile, imprisonment and execution are normal in the royal family. Murder is rare, but still, it’s been known to happen.
Take your pick of princely squabbles. Henry I possibly had his older brother William II killed. Henry II definitely imprisoned his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Their sons tried to force Henry from his throne. (He commissioned a mural about it. The rich are different.) Queen Isabella deposed her husband, Edward II — and may have played a part in his death. Henry IV definitely usurped his cousin Richard II, who was killed in prison. Richard III confined his nephews Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, who were also murdered in prison. Mary I put her half sister, Elizabeth I, in prison but didn’t kill her. (She just thought about it.) Elizabeth I put their cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, in prison and killed her, though she also imprisoned her own secretary for submitting the death warrant. Andrew’s private secretary — the one who organized the 2019 interview about his emotional response to Pizza Express and his inability to sweat — was spared that.
If history fails to explain his fate, he could turn, finally, to theology: to the English translation of the Bible that his ancestor James I commissioned. He could read Matthew 5:29: “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” I can’t really put it better than that. If you didn’t think they had it in them, it’s almost cheering.
Tanya Gold (@TanyaGold1) is a British journalist who writes for Harper’s Magazine, The Spectator and UnHerd.
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