Let’s start with the fun bit.
On the same day her brother became the first member of the royal family to be arrested in 379 years, Princess Anne stuck to her schedule and went ahead with an official visit… to a prison.
Never change Anne, never change.
Sadly, despite nearly 60 years of the indefatigable Princess Royal royalling as hard as anyone could with nothing but a diet heavy in oats and a wardrobe of gabardine, today that crown finds itself facing the biggest crisis in centuries.
Have no doubt: The monarchy is in mortal danger.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s Thursday arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office is the most elephantine and gargantuan of the ‘big’ moments in royal history.
You have to rewind to the arrest of Charles I in 1647 for treason when they were still learning to spell the word to find a comparably grave moment, when the monarchy was so close to Humpty Dumpty-style falling off a wall and no one being able to put all the pieces back together again.
This all began days ago when the Thames Valley Police put the wheels in motion to begin a “secret operation” to bring Andrew in, The Telegraph has reported.
The first concrete step – the senior officer having to go before a magistrate or district judge to get a warrant and to make the case that they needed to raid both Royal Lodge, Andrew’s former home, and his current one, Wood Farm.
Once granted, the “confie op” [confidential operation] would reportedly have begun, in this case involving about 20 officers, including many who would have been kept in the dark right up until the last minute.
Then came D-Day on Thursday. In the dark, 66 years after Andrew’s arrival was celebrated with a 41-gun salute, police were gathering to collar him.
“The team would have simply been told to report to the station in the early hours”, a former officer explained to the Telegraph.
“They may have even been told to hand over their mobile phones before being given the final briefing, setting out where they were going and what they were doing.”
At about 5am, the convoy of police cars set off from Oxfordshire to make the roughly three hour, 210km drive from their headquarters, to Wood Farm on the Sandringham Estate where Andrew is currently living.
The knock on his front door came just after 8am, shortly after he had finished breakfast. (Handy, it’s always better to be hauled away by the rozzers on a full stomach.)
After about 30 minutes later, an unmarked police car, a second car and a third believed to contain Andrew’s security left Wood Farm and he was taken to Aylsham police station in Norfolk about 45 minutes away.
There he would have been searched, his phone, any jewellery, watch, belt or tie taken away from him, fingerprinted, had DNA taken, then put in a cell and offered food and a drink before his interview began.
Meanwhile, police arrived to search his former digs, Royal Lodge, in Windsor.
Neither Buckingham Palace nor King Charles were reportedly given any forewarning that police were about to swoop.
Nearly 12 hours after that history-making 8am doorknock, the world was gifted one of those photos that will be in history textbooks 50 years from now – of Andrew, bug-eyed scurrying away from the station having finally been personally introduced to the concept of shame.
It might have been the former prince’s birthday but really, this is an image, this moment, is a gift to us.
For the royal family, the magnitude of what comes next cannot be put in too extravagantly hyperbolic terms.
The Palace should be down on their knees muttering prayers and wondering where they might get their hands on a rosary right now.
If they are still holding onto the deluded hope that Andrew’s arrest creates a firebreak between his multifarious sins and the institution by being able to say ‘it’s in the police’s hands’ they deserve everything coming their way.
That’s the equivalent of holding onto royal flat Earth theory.
Because this crisis is about far, far more than what emails one venal prat man may or may not have forwarded but goes to the deep-seated rot that we can all now see lies at the heart of the Palace.
Andrew was a special representative for international trade and investment for ten years, during which he flitted about the globe supposedly repping UK interests.
He was meant to be vigorously flying the flag with two hands, for British industry, and to be patriotically trying out the tap water at consular drinks do’s from Belgrade to Bogota.
He was meant to be appropriately glad-handing every plutocrat, autocrat, bureaucrat and mid-level ministerial functionary wanting to export rivets or radishes or radioactive fuel rods to Merry Ol’ England (and Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland).
He was only in that position, which he is now alleged to have abused, because he was royal; his royal status is at the very heart of centre of this.
Then came the release of the Epstein files which yanked back the curtain on the far grubbier, soiled picture. Andrew, the documents clearly lay out, at the very least, allowed one of Epstein’s confidants to travel with him on official trips, allowed the convicted sex offender to direct who he met with on these official trips, and used his position to merrily do his pal’s bidding like trying to set up a meeting with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
The Epstein files, and historian Andrew Lownie’s Entitled: The Rise And Fall of The House of York, spell out how Andrew spent a decade pursuing his own and his friends’ interests, nest-feathering like a Bently-loving bower bird on heat with all the scruples of Caligula.
And all of this – all of this he did while operating out of an office inside his personal suite at the Palace.
All of this he did while using his own mother’s official residence as head of state to have “private time” with a convicted sex offender, who brought along with him “Sarah Sue and Vera” and a “Romanian very cute.”
All of this he did while permanently being surrounded by taxpayer funded personal protection officers (PPOs) who would surely be doing security checks and keeping detailed records.
All of this he did unfettered, unchecked, and unrestricted, operating with seeming impunity or fear that his Mummy might ever put a crimp in his gluttonous, sybaritic style.
More blind eyes were turned than a seeing eye dog convention.
And we have not even gotten to the allegations that he sexually assaulted Epstein trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre on three occasions in 2001 (a claim he has always denied) or that in 2010 he spent the night with another woman allegedly trafficked to the UK for him, like a sickening sort of sexual delivery service.
Nor the fact that last week, in an unprecedented intervention, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown linked Andrew to 90 flights of Epstein’s “Lolita Express” from British airports carrying girls from Latvia, Lithuania and Russia.
For the Palace there is another layer here too – not just what the Palace might have known but their lengthy track record of trying to tidy Andrew’s doings under the rug like the owners of a commercial carpet factory.
They have dodged, ignored, blanked, stonewalled, and even allegedly coerced a US TV station when it came to covering up Andrew’s behaviour.
In the 15 years since the former prince was outed as being good friends with a convicted sex offender, all the royal family has done is circle the wagons and protect him as he lived in a 30-room, $60 million palatial royal property surrounded by priceless art from the Royal Collection, while helping him find $22 million to settle with Ms Giuffre, while being guarded (for most of these years) by taxpayer-funded security, while being granted, year after year, the privilege of hosting shooting weekends by Queen Elizabeth and King Charles both, and while being, mostly, included in such big set piece moments as the royal family’s walk to church at Easter and Christmas.
King Charles and Crown Inc now face a truly existential crisis.
I have no idea what comes next. Neither, I’d wage, do they.
My bet – Charles is today wistfully daydreaming the example of Edward IV who had his troublesome younger brother drowned in a barrel of Malmsey wine in 1478.
Cin cin.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
‘ 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 ’
