The defenestration of Prince Andrew, involved in a scandal, was inevitable.
The eighth in line to the throne has been falling from grace for decades, but the future Andrew Mountbatten Windsor survived, thanks to the unwavering support of his loving mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II.
Former Prince Andrew will now be known as Andrew Windsor.Credit: AP
However, without her, Andrew could not survive the growing odor of his relationship with convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein and a young woman the billionaire financier trafficked. The prince has strenuously denied raping the woman, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, but the publication of his posthumous memoirs made his stable position in the royal family increasingly untenable.
Despite the traditional separation of powers between the Crown and the British Parliament, some British parliamentarians pushed a parliamentary motion to strip Andrew of his titles and questioned his way of living in the sprawling Royal Lodge in exchange for peppercorn rent. The politicization of the matter forced King Charles: he began the formal process to withdraw his younger brother’s titles and honors and, for good measure, evicted him and his ex-wife.
The British monarchy and members of the royal family live in a rarefied world that encompasses church, state and class, and for some embody national cultural identity and historical legacy; others see them as a symbol of privilege, inequality and a cost to the state.
But in the age of modern media, royals often behave like moths to celebrities. Shakespeare may have written about the fatal flaws of English kings, but at the time the tabloid nickname “Randy Andy” was certainly a glimpse of princely things to come. Let’s not forget that Princess Diana entered the same interview minefield that later blew up Andrew’s credibility. And then there is the ongoing Prince Harry and Meghan saga, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s escape to the United States.
Even before soap operas, royals have long been involved in scandals that undermine their credibility.
In 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated to marry an American divorcee and was banished. In the 1950s, Princess Margaret fell in love with Peter Townsend, a divorced man with a living ex-wife, but Queen Elizabeth II, as head of the Church of England, could not approve the marriage, creating a constitutional conflict between her official duties and her personal relationship with her sister.
Times have changed. No one batted an eyelid last month when the divorced head of the Church of England became the first British monarch to hold a joint prayer service with the Catholic pontiff since King Henry VIII broke with Rome. Andrew’s imbroglio took much of the oxygen away from the ecumenical achievements of his older brother, King.
