He may have voluntarily stopped using his Duke of York title, but the furor continues for Prince Andrew.
This week, a member of British parliament lodged a motion to force the government into formally stripping him of all his royal titles, including the Duke of York. While it’s not clear how much traction this will have — according to The Guardian, this ‘early day’ type of motion generally goes nowhere — it does echo the sentiment reported in a new YouGov poll that found 63 per cent of the 6,700 respondents “strongly” believed he should be officially (rather than just voluntarily not using) his York dukedom.
As well, according to the Mail on Sunday, London’s Metropolitan Police are investigating claims that Andrew asked his taxpayer-funded bodyguard to dig up dirt on Giuffre in 2011. There are also allegations, found in her posthumous memoir, by Virginia Giuffre that his team tried to hire internet trolls to “hassle” her online in the wake of her allegations that she had been forced to have sex with the prince while she was still a minor.
The Times has reported that Prince Andrew, who formally stepped back from royal work five years ago in an earlier round of scandals related to his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and allegations of sexual assault by Virginia Giuffre, has not paid rent on Royal Lodge, the palatial property that he still shares with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, since 2003. Additionally, his lease entitles him to live in the property on the grounds of Windsor Castle until 2078.
This is all playing out against the backdrop of his brother King Charles’s historic visit to the Vatican, where he just became the first British monarch to pray alongside the Pope since King Henry VIII split with the Catholic Church five hundred years ago. (It’s widely speculated that the timing of Prince Andrew’s announcement last week was to keep the focus off him as his brother undertook this significant trip, a strategy that does not entirely seem to have worked.)
If you missed it, last Friday evening U.K. time, Prince Andrew 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. Last 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!”
Last 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 disaster that it has been turned into two different dramatizations for the screen.
As well as giving up the title of Duke of York, Andrew 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.
