Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom has reportedly been banished from the royal residence as he faces a civil trial in the United States o...
Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom has reportedly been banished from the royal residence as he faces a civil trial in the United States over longstanding allegations that he sexually abused Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre when she was 17.
In January, Andrew’s mother Queen Elizabeth II stripped him of his royal and military titles.
As the BBC noted at the time, Buckingham Palace has sought to put a great deal of distance between itself and the accused prince, who is Her Majesty’s second son, amid Giuffre’s high-profile lawsuit.
Now, however, it appears that the heir to the throne, Prince Charles, has gone a step further and effectively banned his younger brother from Windsor Castle, where the queen spends most of her weekends.
The U.K. Sun reported Friday that a royal source said the Prince of Wales and wife Camilla have been on the “warpath” since the lawsuit was filed last year, and the tabloid noted that Andrew has not been seen at Windsor since his titles were stripped.
“Charles wants Andrew out of the line of sight and out of the picture,” the source said, according to The Sun.
“He has been warned to keep his head down. Charles does not want Andrew to be photographed every other day looking happy and waving as he is driven to the castle.”
The New York Post’s Page Six noted that Charles has taken a more prominent role in royal affairs since the death of his father, Prince Phillip, last year, and that he is reportedly angry that his brother assured him when the sex abuse rumors first surfaced that they would likely go away.
Andrew has adamantly denied Giuffre’s allegations about incidents she claimed were orchestrated by the late, notorious Jeffrey Epstein, who died in a Manhattan jail cell awaiting charges for sex trafficking in 2019, and Epstein’s longtime associate and former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Maxwell was convicted Dec. 29 of charges that she groomed underage girls for Epstein to abuse. (It’s been rumored Maxwell had a rather steamy affair with Prince Andrew herself.)
Giuffre filed her suit against the royal in the summer 2021.
After Epstein’s high-profile arrest and subsequent death in what was ruled a suicide, Andrew’s role in the twisted affair gained new attention.
That prompted him to give an ill-fated interview in which he claimed Giuffre’s story was utterly false, even pointing to some sort of gland disorder he has to undermine her claims that he sweated profusely when the two had once danced together at a nightclub.
Following the airing of the disastrous interview, Andrew largely retreated from the spotlight.
One can hardly blame the royal family for reportedly going to such great lengths to put distance between itself and the accused wayward prince; they’ve got the prestige of the British royal family to maintain.
While the queen approaches her platinum jubilee — the first time in history a British monarch has celebrated 70 years on the throne — the carefully guarded royal family has been embroiled in tawdry scandal, from the very public split with Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle to Andrew’s own alleged escapades with notorious American sex offenders and their underage recruits.
The queen has had to navigate maintaining her iconic image with swift, decisive responses to the stains on the Windsor family name. In Andrew’s case, it seems unlikely that she or Charles believe the Duke of York’s innocence as he faces his civil lawsuit in New York.
It’s easy to imagine they’re getting out ahead of the back-to-back scandals that are likely to erupt once more details come to light during the lawsuit, and doing what they can to protect the family name as Andrew’s own appears to be likely to be tarnished forever.
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