It is necessary to have studied the character in great depth to pronounce such a resounding verdict. As the former Prince Andrew was, his first response was visceral: “He is stupid.” Then he added:
“He is a very self-satisfied guy, who feels entitled to everything. His own sense of who he is derives from being a member of the royal family. I think that deep down he is a very insecure person, with little personality, who people, in general, find very boring. But all his life he has been told that he is wonderful and he has been overprotected. He has no moral barriers. And at this point he is not able to understand the problem he has created,” he explained Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York (William Collins, 2025) (Privileged: Rise and Fall of the House of York) is an entire 450-page amendment against Andrew, the most serious problem facing the British royal house in the contemporary era.
His intervention as a pilot in the Falklands War (April-June 1982) briefly made him a national hero. Until the time came to find a public occupation for him. That’s where the problems began. “We have always had a problem with minor members of the royal family, partly because they do not share the queen’s sensitivity in capturing public opinion, and partly because they convey the impression (fairly or unfairly) of possessing rights or privileges that in some cases are not justified by the tasks they perform,” Jonathan Sumption, historian, lawyer and former Supreme Court justice, explained to EL PAÍS when the Epstein scandal began to announce the beginning of the end for the then Duke of York.
that showed the queen’s son as an irresponsible and spoiled party animal who had been capable of sexually abusing the women that his friend Epstein put on a platter for him. The photo in which Andrés grabbed Virginia Giuffre’s naked waist, then a minor captured in the billionaire pedophile’s perverse network, spoke for itself. The woman took the then prince to court and accused him of sexual abuse.
Andrés, in a demonstration of arrogance that was his sentence, tried to defend himself, in which he demonstrated with abysmal clarity how far from reality the queen’s son was. His responses, with ridiculous arguments to try to deny his relationship with the woman and a tone of unbearable arrogance, caused a commotion in Buckingham Palace and in British society. Dozens of companies and institutions began to disassociate themselves in cascade from the philanthropic projects of the then Duke of York, and the queen, reluctantly encouraged by the heir, Charles of England, and his son, Prince William, decided to remove her favorite from the public tasks of representing the royal house.
Because despite her undeniable institutional commitment, when it came to Andrew, Elizabeth II did not fail to show the dilemmas of her dual status as mother and queen: in 2011, just weeks after Giuffre 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 of the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, the highest honor that can be aspired to for “personal service.” to the crown and the second highest in the hierarchy of decorations.
“It happened to her a bit like Margaret Thatcher. She turned a blind eye to a son who was useless, and supported both his ambition and his corruption. I’m afraid the queen committed the same thing,” says historian Lownie.
Andrés’ 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 appearance of Robert Redford.” Already in the seventies, the press dubbed him Randy Andy (Libidinous or horny Andy), after being caught in the female accommodation at the Scottish boarding school in Gordonstoun, where he studied. Countless romances have been attributed to him, with well-known names and even simultaneously, although several women have spoken to the press about his rude manners and childish behavior.
Another of his nicknames is Air Miles Andy (Andrés Air Miles), due to excessive use of helicopters and private planes for transportation. The National Audit Office (the independent spending regulator) 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 had resigned from being a commercial envoy for the United Kingdom, precisely due to the incipient controversy over his closeness to Epstein, who had already been convicted of sexual crimes against a minor.
At that time, the royal house hoped to control the scandal with a series of incremental punishments −withdrawal of titles, expulsion from the official residence where he lived…−, which would show apparent firmness and calm public irritation.
But all the information that has emerged in Epstein’s published documents, which points to Andrés, has shocked British society to the point of becoming the biggest crisis suffered by the monarchy in recent decades.
Andrés and Sarah’s mutual aid society
and inseparable from the story of Prince Andrew. Until recently, she has continued to share the homes of the royal house with him. The now former Duchess of York had a knack for social relationships that her ex-husband lacked, but also a penchant for money and a compulsive tendency to spend it without restraint that put Buckingham Palace in trouble on many occasions. He became “the greatest single threat of that era to the monarchy,” as Robin Janvrin, Elizabeth II’s then communications secretary, said when Epstein’s shadow was not yet present.
Accustomed to falling and getting up, there was a moment, during the last years, when she played at being an ally of Charles III, to convince her ex-husband to avoid public overexposure that only complicated things for her brother. His skill was even rewarded with a new invitation to the family Christmas celebration at Sandringham.
The revelation of , sent in 2011, despite the fact that he was already convicted of sexual crimes at the time, once again pilloried the character with the most survival instinct in the complex world of .
Her fall, however, does not seem to be as resounding as that of her ex-husband, Prince Andrew, who never even in his worst dreams imagined that one day he would leave home arrested by the police.
