He may continue to be crowned with other unofficial titles — “scandal-plagued,” “disgraced royal” among them — but Prince Andrew will no longer be known as the Duke of York.
On Friday evening U.K. time, the British royal announced that “in discussion with The King and my immediate and wider family” he has decided he’ll no longer be using the ducal title that his mother gave to him on his wedding day, per royal custom.
He’s also dropping “the honours that have been conferred” including his membership in the Order of the Garter, the most elite seal of approval a monarch can bestow.
This news comes in the wake of continued scrutiny around Prince Andrew’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Earlier this week, British tabloids claimed the prince had emailed Epstein a full year after he claimed he’d broken off contact, writing “It would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it” and promising to “keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!”
On Tuesday, The Guardian published an extract from the posthumous memoir of Virginia Giuffre, the American woman who claimed she’d been forced to sleep with the prince when she was a teenager who had been trafficked by Epstein. In it, she details the three times she claims that they had sex. “He was friendly enough, but still entitled — as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright,” Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year, wrote.
In a statement, Prince Andrew says that “the continued accusations about me distract from His Majesty and the Royal Family.” In language that appears to paint this as the 65-year-old falling on his sword rather than, as some have suggested, being told to do so by his older brother, he goes on to say that “I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and my country first.”
The loss of the Duke of York title comes five years after Prince Andrew lost the use of the “His Royal Highness” honorific when he stepped back from public life following an interview with the BBC that was such a public relations car crash that it has been turned into two different dramatizations for the screen.
As well as giving up the title of Duke of York, Andrew he will give up Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order and Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. He will remain a prince, which he has been entitled to since birth.
As a result of this announcement, Prince Andrew’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson — who herself has faced criticism for her association with Epstein, including being dropped as patron by multiple charities earlier this year when a 2011 email praising him as a “supreme and generous friend to our family” was unearthed by The Sun tabloid — will also no longer be known as the Duchess of York, a title she held onto after their divorce.
Prince Andrew’s daughters Beatrice and Eugenie, however, will retain their princess titles.
With files from Associated Press.
