As the Princess of Wales draws plaudits for appearing at Sunday night’s BAFTA awards in a subtly reused Alexander McQueen dress, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex continue to keep the world guessing as to whether they will appear at the coronation in less than three months, the younger members of the British royal family are the ones who seem to have momentum behind them. Yet Prince Andrew is not to be outdone — even if the attention that he receives may not always be welcome.
Not only was it recently announced that he would — flatteringly — be played by Rufus Sewell in a forthcoming dramatization of his notorious 2019 BBC Newsnight interview, but it has been suggested that he will lose his £249,000 ($301,000) annual allowance as from April. In a statement that might lead the cynical to produce tiny violins, he has suggested that he will no longer be able to maintain the ninety-eight-acre Royal Lodge in Windsor if he is to be deprived of this sum of money. This follows the inevitable withdrawal of public funds after he ceased to be a working member of the royal family. King Charles has made it clear that his vision of the monarchy is as a slimmed-down institution; removing Prince Andrew’s dependence on the taxpayer (as far as possible) will surely trim the fat from the operation with admirable ruthlessness.
Yet just as the Duke of York’s nephew’s departure from the Firm has not removed an iota of his ability to grab headlines, so Prince Andrew’s straitened circumstances continue to make him an object of curiosity and — if his supporters have anything to do with it — pity. The bizarre photograph that attempted to prove that he could not have had any sexual activity with Virginia Roberts Giuffre in a bath attracted nothing but ridicule, but there is nonetheless a steady stream of well-briefed “friends of Andrew” attempting to engineer some sort of return to public life for him.
Recent stories in the Daily Telegraph from “a royal source,” which state that the King will not leave his brother either penniless or homeless following Andrew’s eviction from his offices at Buckingham Palace at the end of last year, clearly represent a savvy PR campaign to attempt to continue the Duke’s low-key presence at royal events without controversy. He will, naturally, attend the coronation — presumably with the hope that he will be seen out and about with the rest of his family on other occasions, too.
This is a bold strategy, but it may not succeed. Prince Andrew’s decision to settle with Giuffre without admitting guilt — and now, apparently, attempting to overturn the financial settlement — has done nothing for his public reputation. The continued embarrassment that he will face, even from supposedly helpful newspaper stories, is not going away. Likewise, the Newsnight dramatization will rake over the still-smoldering embers of the story; it is unlikely that Sewell’s portrayal of Andrew will be a sympathetic one. And, finally, while some of the softer-hearted might have been moved by the mental image of the duke destitute, mournfully begging on the streets, it seems unlikely that a man who inherited a substantial sum of money from his mother last year — to say nothing of the £15 million ($18 million) he made from selling Sunninghill Park in 2007 — is going to be using food banks any time soon.
The best thing Prince Andrew could do now is to take a leaf out of the disgraced politician John Profumo’s book, and quietly spend the rest of his life unostentatiously supporting good causes. If he spent time volunteering with military charities and devoted himself to unglamorous public service, many might feel that he had earned some sort of redemption. Yet amid his bluster and clear irritation at the lack of noblesse oblige he has been shown, it is clear that the Duke of York has learnt nothing — and probably never will.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
