One historian has a plan to hold the royal family accountable in the wake of ex-Prince Andrew’s association with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Appearing on The Daily Beast Podcast, British author and royal biographer Andrew Lownie told host Joanna Coles what he thinks of how King Charles III has handled his younger brother’s dealings with the convicted sex offender.
“Well, I don’t think he’s doing a good job,” Lownie, 65, said of the king. “I think the more ruthless he is, the more popular he is. And I think he’s created a bigger problem than it would have been if he’d stepped in some time ago.”
“Even if last October, Andrew hadn’t been allowed to make that statement, saying that he was standing down voluntarily, he denied the allegations. There was no mention of the victims,” Lownie continued. “And people were so angry by that that Charles then had to step in at the end of the month and take away his title and kind of cut him loose.”
Buckingham Palace announced in October that the former prince had been evicted from his Windsor mansion and had all his royal titles stripped over his relationship with Epstein.
“Prince Andrew will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor,” the royal family said in a statement at the time. “His lease on Royal Lodge has, to date, provided him with legal protection to continue in residence. Formal notice has now been served to surrender the lease, and he will move to alternative private accommodation.”
Since then, the disgraced former prince has moved into a private property on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk.
“But if [King Charles III] operated more quickly, he wouldn’t have had this heckling,” the Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York author added. “He wouldn’t have these wider questions being asked about royal accountability and privilege.”
“I’m launching a campaign with [former MP and author] Norman Baker about royal transparency with the [Daily] Mail, to make their finances less opaque,” Lownie explained. “These are things that we wouldn’t be able to do or wouldn’t even have thought of doing if we’d felt the royal family was getting ahead of the story and dealing with it.”
“And there is this suspicion that Andrew will never face charges, that the royal family will ensure that, basically, he continues to be protected as he has been, and nothing really has changed. The elites will take care of themselves whether it’s here or in the States,” he said.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment.
Turning the attention toward Mountbatten-Windsor’s current status, Coles asked the biographer about how the ex-prince spends his time now that he’s under investigation for alleged sex crimes.
“He gets up late. He watches videos. He occasionally goes for a walk. It’s a pretty lonely life,” Lownie said. “He has a close friend called Henry Anderson who comes and sees him, but his life with his family is pretty fractured.”
Lownie mentioned that Andrew’s ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, has “abandoned him” and that he hasn’t been in touch with his second daughter, Princess Eugenie, who is expecting her third child this summer.
“It’s a pretty grim existence in some ways. My understanding, talking to people who are close to him, is he doesn’t seem to realize the seriousness of his situation,” Lownie said.
“We had that picture, taken on the day of his arrest, where he does look very shocked. But he’s sort of come back,” he added. “He’s kind of involved in trivialities. Where he’s going to park his car, and, you know, why can’t he go riding again? He doesn’t seem to realize the seriousness of the charges that could be leveled against him.”
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