The enduring mystery about Jeffrey Epstein isn’t simply how he operated, it’s why so many powerful men wanted to be near him. Strip away the legal files and the lurid headlines, and what you find is something far older and more human: the hunger for relevance, access, and the feeling that somewhere else something more exciting is happening without you.
For Prince Andrew, after being marooned for years in the ceremonial twilight of royal life, Epstein must have felt like an electric current. After he’d finished in the Royal Navy, the royal circuit offered duty, deference, and an endless rotation of polite lunches with aging patrons and cautious handlers.
Epstein offered the opposite of duty and deference. Living in a 40-room townhouse in Manhattan, Epstein had all the trappings of royalty with none of the obligations. Instead of old dowagers and ribbon cuttings, there were private jets, Harvard and MIT professors, billionaire tech founders, late-night conversations, and the seductive promise that here, at last, was the real action.
Andrew’s position as the younger brother—the spare—only sharpened the appeal. He was close enough to power to taste it, but never close enough to own it. Even if the Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park only cost Andrew one peppercorn per year, he didn’t even own his own home. From birth, Andrew was condemned to bow to his brother, a fate that many younger siblings would struggle to accept. We’ve watched a version of that dynamic play out with Harry and Meghan, unable to stomach the hierarchy that places William and Kate at the center of the stage. Epstein, for Andrew, represented an escape from the slow suffocation of protocol. He was a shortcut to relevance.
Peter Mandelson’s attraction was different but no less understandable. Mandelson had already conquered British politics, twice fallen, twice returned, and built a reputation as one of the most formidable operators of the New Labour era. He had moved through the corridors of the European Union in Brussels, shaped policy, and mastered the choreography of power. But Britain, for all its influence, is still a small island psychologically obsessed and depressed by its waning influence. America remains the larger stage, the place where ambition stretches further and reinvention feels limitless.
For an ambitious Brit, it remains the final frontier.
And Epstein understood that instinct perfectly. He positioned himself as a gatekeeper to a world where money and influence blurred into something almost mythic. For a British statesman arriving in America, New York in particular is a beacon of the future, louder, richer, more ruthless, and always promising the next chapter. And demanding more of you than the folks at home. The tech gods feel closer to actual gods, shaping markets, culture and politics. Even for someone as connected as Mandelson, proximity to that energy must have been intoxicating. Epstein offered the sense that you weren’t merely visiting the future, you were already inside it. You were part of it.
That, ultimately, is what bound these men together: not simply scandal or lousy judgment, but the seduction of relevance. Epstein sold a fantasy in which the usual rules of status didn’t apply, where a prince could feel modern again, and a veteran political strategist could feel like a newcomer on the biggest stage in the world. The tragedy is that power rarely recognizes when it is being flattered rather than used. Epstein didn’t just collect people; he understood their longings—and he knew how to keep a secret.
He had so many dark secrets himself, and while his lifestyle pushed some people away, it drew others closer. Epstein gave men permission to indulge their base desires and the opportunity to do it away from the public eye. That is, until the “Epstein files” were released.
Now the whole world knows Andy and Mandy’s dirty secrets. Gossipy emails about the inner workings of the U.K. government may even serve as evidence in a criminal case of suspicion of misconduct in public office. And what seemed like a bit of discreet fun has ended in extreme public humiliation.
After a lifetime of scandal and lousy judgment, a prince and a lord are finally facing consequences. And sadly for them, the one person who could have offered them sanctuary by whisking them off to his private island is gone.
