When the citizen formerly known as Prince Andrew of England came into the world, his mother was so fascinated that she said in a letter to her cousin that the child was “so lovely…”. «He will be terribly spoiled by all of us», wrote Elizabeth II almost prophetically, who little could have imagined, in February 1960, the extent of his clairvoyance. After 65 years, the questionable behavior of her third child and, according to general consensus in the United Kingdom, her small right eye, has caused an earthquake in the British royal house, which is still trying to contain a crisis that has seriously undermined its image and popularity: in a recent poll, support for the monarchy fell below 50%, ten points less than in June.
Demonstrating that the crown weighs more than blood ties, Charles III formalized his brother Andrés’ fall into ostracism this week, with the signing of official documents that strip him of all the titles, including that of prince, which he received at birth. Now he will just be called Andrés Mountbatten Windsor. Furthermore, the United States Congress has requested the appearance of the former Duke of York to clarify his links with the network of Jeffrey Epstein, the pedophile tycoon convicted in 2006, who committed suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting a second trial for child abuse and trafficking. A scandal that has tormented Andrés for years and which is the reason for his exile from the royal family.
As a foreign citizen, Mountbatten Windsor is not obliged to attend, but his persistent silence deepens the cracks that threaten the foundations of the Windsor factory.
But exiled to the royal estate of Sandringham in the county of Norfolk, where he is due to move in early 2026 after being evicted from the Royal Lodge residence in Windsor grounds, Andrew remains an inconvenience to The Company, term by which the Royal House is known, attributed to George VI, grandfather of the current king. While draconian, the decision to withdraw all titles comes from a position of vulnerability.
For years, controversy over Elizabeth II’s favorite son has weighed on the prestige of the monarchy and the consequences of his fall now point directly at Buckingham, under the spotlight of the British media over doubts about what they knew about the palace scandal, when they knew it and whether they had decided to look the other way. Him Mail on Sunday published in October that Andrés told the Queen’s deputy press secretary in 2011 that he had asked his bodyguard to look for potentially compromising information on Virginia Giuffre, one of the victims of the Epstein plot.
For Charles III the conflict is particularly lacerating because it is a hereditary problem. Despite her undeniable institutional commitment towards Andrew, Elizabeth II showed the dilemmas of her double status as mother and queen: in 2011, a few weeks after Giuffre had publicly denounced that she had been forced to have sexual relations with Andrew on three occasions, Elizabeth II awarded her son, who has always denied the accusation, the insignia of Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, the highest honor one can aspire to for a “personal service” to the crown. and second highest in the decoration hierarchy. But Giuffre, who took her own life last April at the age of 41, did not stop targeting the then prince.
It wasn’t the only time the late queen stepped in to help Andrew. After the interview he gave to the BBC in 2019 with the idea of settling the controversy over his personal relationship with Epstein, which resulted in a disaster that further increased suspicions around him, Elizabeth II withdrew his military honors and ordered him to withdraw from public life. However, given the lawsuit filed by Giuffre in the United States in 2022, it is assumed that the queen paid around 12 million dollars (around 10.4 million euros) to close an out-of-court settlement that would end the courts’ threat against her son. He is also believed to have paid off millionaire debts to Sarah Ferguson, with whom Andrés lived for decades despite their separation in 1992.
Andrés’ story is a warning, a warning example of the dangers that a palace life of privilege and self-indulgence can contain. Known for being rude and treating his staff with contempt, the former prince has proven to be the opposite of what the British monarchy wants to convey to the public: that it is an institution that serves the country, and not the other way around, an axiom that Andrés has ignored since the cradle, which ultimately caused its downfall.
His love for women and luxury soon marked his image. Carlos III said of him that he was the one in the family who had “the look of Robert Redford”. Already in the seventies the press nicknamed him Randy Andy (Lustful or horny Andy), after being caught in the girls’ accommodation at the Scottish boarding school Gordonstoun, where he studied. Countless love affairs have been attributed to him, with well-known names and even at the same time, although several women spoke to the press about his rude ways and his childish behavior.
Another of his nicknames is Air Miles Andy (Andrés Air Miles), due to the excessive use of helicopters and private planes for their transfers. The National Audit Office (the independent spending regulator) has condemned the more than 4,000 euros that a helicopter trip of just 80 kilometers for a meal with Arab dignitaries cost. In 2011 and 2012 his travel bill was close to half a million, despite the fact that in 2011 he resigned from his position as trade envoy for the United Kingdom, precisely because of the incipient controversy over his closeness to Epstein, already convicted of sexual crimes against a minor.
Dangerous friendships are his great stain, from oligarchs to alleged spies, so much so that British intelligence came to consider him a threat to national security. His penchant for wealth and his dubious judgment have put him in compromising situations: lunches hosted in Buckingham for questionable figures, such as the billionaire son-in-law of controversial former Tunisian president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali; or the necklace worth 25,000 euros that she accepted from a Libyan arms dealer for her eldest daughter, Beatriz, the same one who had Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, sentenced to 25 years in prison among her guests at her 18th birthday party, or the film mogul Harvey Weinstein, sentenced to 23 years for crimes of sexual violence.
With the privileges of the monarchy, fewer duties than his older brother and the perpetual regret of not having enough money, Andrés has also always been an easy target. In 2024, his links with Yang Tengbo, an alleged Chinese spy who managed to sneak into the most exclusive circles of British high society, were revealed, and last month the three meetings he had between at least 2018 and 2019 were revealed, one of them in Buckingham, with Cai Qi, a high-ranking Chinese official currently at the center of controversy for an alleged espionage plot with ramifications that reach all the way to the government.
