Inside Arrogant Prince Andrew’s Dream of Relaunching His Royal Existence

It is, perhaps, hard to understand why Prince Andrew thought it would be a good idea to relaunch himself into public life on Monday, just 20 weeks after he paid a reputed $12m to settle a sex abuse and rape claim against him brought by a sex trafficking victim of his friend, the late sex offender and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

“The thing about Andrew,” a former royal staffer who previously worked with the prince told The Daily Beast, after surveying the wreckage of the past few days, which culminated in Andrew being obliged to pull out of a key ceremonial public appearance Monday, “is that you cannot possibly underestimate his arrogance. Everything you read about him, everything you hear about him, it’s not just all true, it doesn’t even begin to capture the entitlement of the man.”

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The source said that people who have worked with him are utterly unsurprised at Andrew’s ongoing attempts to worm his way back into royal life, despite Queen Elizabeth issuing a statement in mid-January, as his legal woes in the Giuffre case were deepening, which stated: “With The Queen’s approval and agreement, the Duke of York’s military affiliations and Royal patronages have been returned to The Queen. The Duke of York will continue not to undertake any public duties and is defending this case as a private citizen,” it said.

Although it was not part of the statement, official sources briefed that Andrew had also been asked to no longer use the title “His Royal Highness”.

While that might have seemed a statement of unvarnished permanence to the public, insiders at the palace are far from surprised at Andrew’s attempts to worm his way back into public life, the former staffer said.

“Everyone who knows him guessed he would never willingly stand down from his royal position forever because his entire status springs from that royal position. It looks utterly ridiculous to everyone else, but he is completely convinced that because of the accident of his birth, he is 100 percent entitled to pick up where he left off.”

The latest collision between reality and Andrew’s fantasy rehabilitation as a working royal who just happened to have paid a reported $12 million to a woman who accused him of rape (he still insists he has no recollection of ever meeting Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a friend of the prince’s told The Daily Beast) came on Monday, when Andrew was kicked out of all public-facing elements of events to mark so-called “Garter Day.”

Garter Day is a gathering at Windsor Castle of the 24 individuals who are the fellows of the Order of the Garter, a revered British institution which is the last remaining legacy of the chivalric, knightly orders that once governed British life.

Founded by Edward III in 1348, its members comprise former prime ministers, generals, top civil servants and other Establishment figures. According to Buckingham Palace, the current purpose of the fellowship is to “honor those who have undertaken public service, who have contributed in a particular way to national life.”

Prince Andrew was made a member of the order by the personal order of the monarch in 2006, which has led the palace to make the hugely unconvincing argument that he is a member of the national institution in a “private” capacity, and therefore does not need to be removed from the order as part of his general defenestration from royal life.

Hmm.

While Andrew is copping a lot of the blame for Monday’s debacle—and there is no doubt that his vanity propelled him to lobby furiously to attend Garter Day, seeing it as a possible springboard back to royal life—the queen has demonstrated a worrying lack of the ruthless impartiality demanded of a monarch by having been prepared to allow Andrew to participate fully in the Garter Day events.

Indeed, part of the reason why Andrew is in such a rush to be rehabilitated is without doubt because he knows full well that once his last great patron, his mother, dies, his brother Charles, who despaired of him long before the Giuffre scandal, will metaphorically install a fingerprint scanner on the throne room, and Andrew will never ever be allowed anywhere near the crux of power ever again.

Andrew has a vanishingly small window of opportunity to act, and it is interesting to consider when his next opportunity to thrust himself into the limelight at an allegedly “family” event will come. Christmas? Garter Day 2023? Well, neither, if William or Charles have anything to do with it.

The importance of William’s united front with his father on this matter is an important factor. Indeed, he may even, by virtue of his junior status, be able to be a bit blunter about it to granny; the rumor is that Andrew’s attendance was apparently only finally curtailed when Prince William issued a “him or me” ultimatum.

The thunderous anger clearly visible on William’s face as he marched around Windsor in a silly hat on Monday certainly suggested no reason to dispute this rumor. Father and son’s unity on the Andrew question is undisputed. But Andrew has access to the one weak spot in the otherwise impenetrable granite wall of royal resolve, and the likelihood is he will keep on chipping away until his mother dies.

“The queen is putty in his hands,” the friend of Andrew says. “He is the favorite son and he goes to visit her for a cup of tea and says, ‘But mummy…’ and he wins her round.”

The royal author Robert Hardman who recently wrote a biography of Queen Elizabeth with the cooperation of the palace, told The Daily Beast something similar in April, saying: “Over the course of the reign there have been plenty of moments where a decision has been made that the Duke of York isn’t very keen on, and he has been known to pop round to see his mother for a cup of tea and rearrange the furniture.”

One oft-told story about Prince Andrew is that when attending a two-day shooting party at an English country house, he came down to breakfast one morning and and, when the other guests didn’t stand up when he entered the room, said, “Lets try that again shall we?” He then left the room and re-entered. History is divided on whether or not the other guests rose from their seats or not.

Nigel Cawthorne, author of Prince Andrew, Epstein, Maxwell, and the Palace, told The Daily Beast: “His arrogance has been from when he was young. In the navy, people who had known Charles found Charles much more humble, and during the time he was a trade envoy, people found him pretty insufferable. He always needed a bigger suite, or a guy carrying around a 6 ft ironing board for him.

“But if you’re born and brought up behind palace walls, and as soon as you can walk and talk servants are calling you ‘Your Royal Highness,’ you are going to get a pretty skewed view of the world.”

Cawthorne thinks the likelihood of Andrew ever fulfilling his dream of a return to royal life shows his utter delusion.

“It’s hard to imagine, if you were sat next to him at a royal dinner, what would you talk about exactly? I don’t think he can ever escape what happened.”