Why did the Queen take so long to call time for Prince Andrew?

Prince AndrewThe excommunication from royal life, announced this week by the queen, was certainly a dramatic moment. However, as he prepares to continue fighting or end or settle his legal case with his juvenile rape accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Andrew’s expulsion is also the inevitable end of a long string of suspicious behavior and many alarm bells.

Consider these days. December 2010: Prince Andrew photographed walking in Central Park, New York, with Jeffrey Epstein, who was released after serving only thirteen months of an eighteen-month sentence in Florida for sex trafficking of a minor. Six weeks later, Mail on Sunday released the infamous 2001 photo of Andrew and Virginia Giuffre, 17, at Ghislaine Maxwell’s London home.

March 2011: At a private ceremony at Windsor Castle, the Queen makes Andrew a Knight of the Great Cross of the Royal Victorian Order “for personal services to the Queen.”

That is not the case with a tin ear. It was announced that the Queen had raised the royal ramparts to shield her second son. Apparently, she accepted his version of events.

This was the era before #MeToo, and Andrew had the arrogance that came with royal power and privilege. From the outset, his lawyers sought to paint Giuffre as a cheaply hired fairy godmother (a line of paintings still sold by another friend of Epstein, Alan Dershowitz). The word “drudgery” was later included in legal rebuttals to Giuffre’s account, as in: “The duke staunchly denies the allegations.”

A key figure in perpetuating the royal saga is – giving him his full title – Baron Geidt of Croberg of Ross and Cromarty County, or more hilariously, Lord Geidt. He was recently featured as an “ethical adviser” to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a title that could suggest a hopeless cause. (He ruled that Johnson did not “deliberately mislead” an inquiry into who paid for the costly renovation of the Downing Street apartment occupied by the Prime Minister, although, he said Johnson did. act “recklessly.”)

From 2007 to 2017 Geidt was the queen’s private secretary. In that role, he is the Queen’s most powerful adviser, and he is arguably the most secure arm the Queen has since her days as her first private secretary, as suggested by ambiguity to fame through the Netflix TV series Crown, Tommy Lascelles, the stern guard of the palace probation.

Geidt was, by all accounts, an ingenious guide to the queen at a time when the monarchy was straining to remain relevant in a new century when court opulence and social attitudes The pure association of the family reflects a different era. The building of a united front around Andrew could not have happened without Geidt’s consent.

And, for a time, Andrew’s violations of taste and judgment, as well as a legion as they are, did not seem to pose a danger to the organization. Geidt, however, discovered that his powers as executor did not match those of Lascelles when the Queen was still a novice.

In 2017, he was forced out. He surpassed both Andrew and Charles, who – in a rare moment of agreement – had complained to their mother. Charles wanted to take on more of the Queen’s role than Geidt thought fit, and Geidt was too concerned with Andrew’s business ventures and spending habits. Geidt’s gift from the Queen is his Scottish baron. (He was born in London and this was an attempt to strengthen the royal family’s ties to Scotland at a time when Scottish nationalism was on the rise.)

That ending gave Andrew new consolation that the queen had his back. The same is not true of Charles. At the time, the heir had his own court at Clarence House, a lot of people were waiting for the court, and they were more suspicious of Andrew’s entanglement with Epstein.

But all of this is complicated by the queen’s unwavering affection for Andrew. This was confirmed to me some time ago, by a close family member. Andrew, it is explained, always plays the hilarious extrovert to Charles’s more guarded inner self. He also humorously shared his father’s alpha male text, and his mother enjoyed his companionship.

Of course, it’s not uncommon for mothers to love their children, too. A case in point is one of fourteen Prime Ministers to have served the Queen, Margaret Thatcher. She has a twin, Mark, a son and daughter Carol.

Thatcher’s fondness for Mark became public in 1982 when he disappeared while competing in a trans-Saharan car race. For six days, the so-called Iron Lady melted into tears until her son, who was simply lost, turned around. (There is a scene in Crown where the Queen was surprised to see this side of Thatcher.) His sister was openly upset by her mother’s bias.

The point here is that a mother’s favoritism towards the Queen can have consequences. Charles had long resented his mother’s tolerance of Andrew’s laziness and vanity, especially the way Andrew was always willing to take advantage of the Queen’s generosity, and he was not fussy about it. the way i do it.

For example, the Queen sponsored the conversion of Sunninghill Park, a 12-bedroom country house, as her wedding gift to Andrew and Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson. But in 2007, Andrew, because he was hungry for money, sold the house to Timur Kulibayev, the billionaire son-in-law of the President of Kazakhstan, for £15 million, three million more than the original asking price. The house has never been inhabited and was demolished in 2016.

That way of dealing with shady people kindly accommodating Andrew’s demand in return for his public connection to the royal family, is one of the reasons why he was so willing to party with Epstein, whom he was he is a title. It is important to emphasize how strong and enduring the relationship is. It was highlighted when, at Maxwell’s trial, a photo was taken of Epstein and Maxwell staying at Craigowan Lodge, a seven-bedroom hideaway on the queen’s favorite estate, Balmoral in July 1999, with as Andrew’s guest. (The Queen was not in Balmoral at the time.)

For a long time, it seemed that Andrew had succeeded in removing the stain of his visits to Epstein’s corrupt dens. But when Epstein was arrested a second time, in July 2019, the relationship was suddenly under scrutiny again. Two weeks later, when Epstein died and the case was closed, Andrew’s role was more aggressively pursued by Giuffre’s attorneys, alleging that she was forced to have sex with him three times. In November 2019, Andrew decided to try to solve that problem in an interview with Emily Maitlis, a particularly tenacious and responsive BBC reporter.

We don’t know if the queen consented to this interview in advance. For most of her reign, the BBC showed great respect for the monarchy. The company is still seen as almost an accessory to the royal soap opera, always covering annual ceremonies or special events, like Harry and Meghan’s wedding. Andrew has set up the interview hoping it will turn out like one of those warm hugs, where he can show up on the injured side.

But this is not your mother’s BBC station. Like Maitlis say then in Guardians, “This is a man – a prince – who has not come to repent. He’s come to take back the right to tell the story his way.” He showed no remorse for so many of Epstein’s victims.

Regardless of how the Queen felt, Charles took advantage of the moment to ban Andrew from making official public appearances. Even then, that didn’t do much to bring Andrew down. And he seemed unfazed when Maxwell was finally tracked down and arrested in July 2020, although that puts his position in more peril. And then, a week before his father’s funeral, in April 2021, he told everyone – the wrong way – that he expected to be able to return to public service shortly. He had forced his mother to let him appear at the funeral in the uniform of a Fleet Admiral. She refused, banning any military uniforms.

During this year, the Queen’s platinum year, marking 70 years of the longest reign of a king, her second son is a pariah, considered a non-indigenous person. system, and has left, according to the statement. about the official announcement to defend his case “as a private citizen.”

Has the Queen finally accepted that Andrew is a bad guy? For her subjects, the Queen is always above rebuke. It is sad to see that, if she fails, it is man himself who expects more from a man than he can give.