It was the deeply uncomfortable royal moment that quickly went viral. Prince Andrew, turning to his nephew, Prince William, apparently hoping to share a casual chat on the steps of Westminster Abbey after the Duchess of Kent’s funeral.
What he got? Crickets.
The heir to the throne could not have appeared more awkward, appearing to visibly shift away from his uncle, rather than engage, in footage shared endlessly online.
Fast forward six weeks, and in just 109 blistering words, Buckingham Palace has finally swung the axe – metaphorically – on any remaining links between itself and the man now known simply as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.
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Yes, six years after the disastrous Newsnight interview that effectively ended Andrew’s royal career, the King finally took the extreme and decisive action being called for by a growing public swell.
The process has now begun for him to be stripped of all remaining royal titles, including “prince”, and for his eviction from the 30-room Royal Lodge that he has so firmly clung on to all these years.
As the scandal around Andrew brewed over the years, the late Queen is said to have been reluctant to move against the offspring who was widely-reported to be her favourite.
Just a couple of years into his reign, the King has surely been in a tough spot as he juggled sibling loyalty with his royal responsibilities. By his biographer Catherine Mayer’s admission, the King is “loyal to a fault … sometimes to the point of fault” – and even he’d reached his tipping point this week.
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But as Andrew Lownie, the author of explosive new Andrew biography Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, told Hello, William was much more “ruthless” than his father when it came to “dealing with Andrew”.
Lownie also claimed in his explosive book that longstanding issues existed between Andrew and William dating back years – even before the former’s reputational free fall.
Meanwhile, certainly no one would envy the King’s position in all of this. Andrew has staunchly denied all allegations of wrongdoing made against him, which includes accusations of sexual abuse by Virginia Giuffre, but even so, his ongoing ties to Jeffrey Epstein were enough to ruin him.
It was the King’s call, ultimately, on exactly how and when that should or would play out.
As former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond told Closer recently, the Prince of Wales has been unwavering in his stance when it comes to his scandal-plagued relative.
“William has been a strong voice in managing ‘the Andrew problem’ — he is adamant that there is no way back for his uncle,” she told the outlet.
Before the announcement that Andrew would be stripped of his titles and lavish home, a senior royal aide told Radar Online that the Prince and Princess of Wales, “devastated and angry” at the scandal, had approached the King and pushed for stronger action.
“William and Kate are completely aligned on this,” the source said.
“They’ve told the King that things have to change.”
As the Daily Beast’s royal commentator, Tom Sykes, put it bluntly: “[William] wants [Andew] out and he is likely to do this as soon as he can … Almost as soon as he becomes King, William is planning to formally banish Andrew from the Royal Family,”
In Entitled, it’s also claimed that William had been campaigning for years to get his uncle and his ex-wife, Sara Ferguson, evicted from the Royal Lodge.
“He [William] also loathes Sarah, Andrew’s ex-wife, and can’t wait for the day when his father throws them both out,” a source alleged in the book.
“If Charles doesn’t, I guarantee you the first thing William does when he eventually becomes king is to get them evicted.”
William’s alleged position on Andrew was further fuelled when Andrew attended the annual Easter service at Windsor alongside the royal family earlier this year – but the Prince and Princess of Wales were conspicuously absent.
“William has no time for his uncle. This Easter was about spending time with his own family, but he would far prefer a situation where he doesn’t have to spend time with him,” a royal source told The Mirror at the time.
It’s also been widely reported that William has been instrumental in ensuring Andrew remains out of the working royal fold in the years since his trainwreck Newsnight interview.
The late Queen’s historic, long reign meant that her son Charles was always going to have a relatively shorter stint on the throne by default – and therefore would be acutely aware of ensuring a reasonably healthy institution is passed on to his own heir when the time comes.
Andrew’s scandals have been a festering crisis for much longer than anyone should reasonably have been accepted to tolerate.
The line has now finally been drawn in the sand, thanks to the Palace’s bombshell statement on Thursday night, UK time – and what a relief it must be for the future King.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.news.com.au ’
