Prince William will not allow his uncle Andrew anywhere near his coronation or even royal life once he is king, according to a recent report.
William was consulted and favored his father’s decision to force Andrew to renounce use of his Duke of York and other royal titles amid damning disclosures about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, The Sunday Times reported. At the same time, the Prince of Wales thinks his dad, Charles III, is cutting his brother too much slack and remains unsatisfied, the newspaper said.
Andrew said he was stepping back because the “continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the Royal Family,” compelling him to “put my duty to my family and country first.”
William, however, is said to be more concerned with the welfare of sexual abuse victims, The Sunday Times reported. He is conscious of the potential message that seeing Andrew at events alongside his royal relatives could telegraph to survivors, the newspaper said.
The 65-year-old Andrew’s banishment under William’s reign will encompass every single facet of royal life, including public and private royal events and most state occasions, The Sunday Times reported. King Charles has simply asked his brother to remain “invisible” at such functions and told Andrew and ex-wife Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson not to come to Sandringham for family Christmas. Ferguson also can no longer use the Duchess of York title.
The tipping point for King Charles may have been the revelation that Andrew lied about cutting off his friendship with disgraced globetrotting financier Epstein, who allegedly trafficked teens and young women to prominent men around the world, including Andrew. Both Andrew and Ferguson continued contact with Epstein even after publicly disavowing him as he became mired in victim allegations starting around 2010, newly leaked emails have revealed. Epstein died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
One of Epstein’s most prominent accusers was Virginia Giuffre, who was 16-year-old Virginia Roberts when Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell lured her from Mar-a-Lago with a job offer that quickly turned into exploitation. Giuffre, who committed suicide in April at age 41, had consistently maintained she was forced into sex with Andrew three times, two of them when she was 17. She sued him, and Andrew settled in 2022 for an undisclosed sum.
In 2019 Andrew told BBC journalist Emily Maitlis in a “Newsnight” interview that he had cut off all contact with Epstein in 2010. But last week email correspondence emerged between the two in 2011, right around the time a now-famous photo of him with Giuffre was published. London authorities are now looking into whether Andrew asked his taxpayer-funded bodyguard to dig up dirt on Giuffre.
Fergie in 2011 publicly disavowed her Epstein association and said taking money from him was a “terrible, terrible error of judgment,” only to turn around and praise him as a “steadfast, generous and supreme friend” in an apology email, The Sunday Times reported.
Andrew has denied knowing Giuffre or committing any of the acts attributed to him. As snippets and excerpts trickle out from Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice” on the eve of the book’s Tuesday publication, pressure is building for Andrew to be officially stripped of his royal titles, which would require an act of parliament.
With News Wire Services
