In The Queen and I, the novelist Sue Townsend imagined the monarchy being abolished and the royal family banished to a council estate, on a street known locally as Hell Close.
That was wild, hilarious fiction.
Today it is a stone-cold fact that Prince Andrew has been abolished and banished. It’s quite different from seeing out his days in a council house, but few imagine that his new life, somewhere on the lush Sandringham estate, will be anything other than a private hell.
Andrew is a commoner, but what will that mean? What will life be like for 65-year-old Andrew Mountbatten Windsor? Will it bring an end to the questions still being asked about him and his dealings with the late disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein?
Royal observers believe Thursday’s announcement represents nothing short of “absolute humiliation” for Andrew.
Richard Fitzwilliams, a royal author and commentator, told the Guardian: “I think it will be pretty well a living hell for him, given his particular fondness for titles and his entitled attitude.”
Andrew has never done himself any favours, Fitzwilliams said. The public have rarely warmed to him. “One of the troubles with him is that he has proven to be so greedy.
“People see him as entitled, greedy and also unbelievably bovine because of that extraordinary Newsnight interview,” he said.
Titles are rarely taken away and the history of it will surely burn hard on Andrew’s pride. The last men to be stripped of their princehood were the Dukes of Cumberland and Albany, in 1919, after they fought for Germany in the first world war.
Observers say that when he was a prince, Andrew particularly enjoyed going to the annual and lavish Garter Day ceremony at Windsor Castle in June.
But he has been stripped of the Order of the Garter, too, just as Emperor Hirohito of Japan was during the second world war.
“He has been treated as an enemy of the state, effectively,” the royal biographer Robert Hardman told Sky News.
Andrew is banished and has no chance of being invited to the king’s Christmas celebrations – or any royal event save, perhaps, royal funerals, said Fitzwilliams.
Questions remain, though, including why Andrew remains eighth in line to the throne.
“I’m sure at some point quite soon, somebody will ask, if they’ve not already done so, why he hasn’t been moved from the line of succession,” said Joe Little, the managing editor of Majesty Magazine.
Little told the Guardian it is not all bleak for Andrew, particularly since the king is providing him somewhere new to live.
“He will no longer be in Windsor, but he’ll be on a private royal estate in Norfolk, and will have accommodation provided and he will be supported in other ways by his brother, the king, for whom it’s been, equally, a very difficult time.”
Andrew has always denied any wrongdoing, but if he thinks the stripping of his titles is the end of troubles, then others will beg to disagree. He is now an “ordinary member of the public” and some see that as an opportunity for him to be extradited.
The family of the late Virginia Giuffre – who claimed to have been trafficked to and made to have sex with Andrew when she was 17 – continue to call for Andrew to face justice in the US. He “needs to be behind bars”, Giuffre’s brother Sky Roberts told the BBC’s Newsnight programme on Thursday.
The UK trade minister Sir Chris Bryant also suggested Andrew should, if asked, go to the US to answer questions about the crimes of Epstein.
Bryant told the BBC: “I think that, just as with any ordinary member of the public, if there were requests from another jurisdiction of this kind, I would expect any decently minded person to comply with that request.”
The Democratic congressman Suhas Subramanyam recently called on Andrew to appear before a committee that is investigating the handling of Jeffrey Epstein’s prosecution.
“If he did nothing wrong, he should come before a committee and swear himself in and testify that he did nothing wrong,” he said.
In the UK there have been signs that formal parliamentary inquiries may be launched into Andrew’s affairs.
The Metropolitan police have also said they are “actively” looking into claims that Andrew passed Giuffre’s date of birth and social security number to his police protection officer in an attempt to dig up dirt for a smear campaign.
It is impossible to say exactly what is next for Andrew, but no one can see a meaningful way back for him as a public figure.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.theguardian.com ’
