Pariliament can remove Prince Andrew's title, but it requires legislation. Future actions may fall to Prince William who is expected to take more decisive approach. Photo / Getty Images
There is a mechanism, the Duke of York may not be pleased to learn, by which Parliament can remove not just a dukedom but even the title of “prince”. It would need legislation, followed by Royal Assent from the King, but it is nevertheless technically possible.
It would be complicated, blockbuster headline news, and would need the quiet (unofficial) backing of the Palace.
But as a new biography about Prince Andrew and his ex-wife lays out every scandal, indiscretion and excruciating moment of bad manners over his lifetime, courtiers would be forgiven for swotting up on what is possible.
“How do you solve a problem like Prince Andrew?” The Daily Telegraph wondered just a year ago, after the latest batch of Epstein papers in which the duke, who has always denied wrongdoing, was mentioned 69 times with the words “orgy” and “forced to have sexual relations”.
Since then, things have only gone further downhill.
Prince Andrew was embroiled in a Chinese spy scandal.
His hopes of eventual redemption in the court of public opinion were extinguished with the suicide of Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of forcing her into sex and whose family spoke of a “toll of abuse … so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle”.
The fall from grace even reached the tiny island of Saint Helena, in the South Atlantic, where the “Prince Andrew School” changed its name earlier this year, with the quiet agreement of Buckingham Palace.
His living arrangements in Windsor, after his brother the King lost patience and removed his indefinite funding, remain a battle with such little progress that it has become known as the “siege of Royal Lodge”.
Hopes that the King and his senior courtiers would make progress on the “Prince Andrew question” during his early reign have not come to pass, with priorities shifting rapidly after the King was diagnosed with cancer. “Something,” says one source, “still needs to be done.”
Attempts “for the King and his brother to resolve things” have not gone far enough, in the view of many Palace insiders. But, others acknowledge, there is only so much the King can sensibly do. Prince Andrew has his own, longstanding lease agreement with the Crown Estate for his home, and as long as he can maintain it – at an estimated cost of millions of pounds – he cannot be evicted.
He has finally bowed out of all but a few remaining public appearances, keeping largely out of the way during Garter Day this year. The status quo falls into a pattern set by the late Queen Elizabeth II, in which Prince Andrew is permitted to attend “family occasions” only. In recent years that has meant he and his ex-wife Sarah, Duchess of York, joining the family for the Sandringham Christmas walk and at St George’s Chapel for Easter Sunday.
“[Andrew] can’t be banned from Church,” says one Palace source, regretfully. Almost all in Palace circles now admit that it cannot continue indefinitely.
Recent YouGov polling has put him at 9% popularity, well below that of the beleaguered Duke and Duchess of Sussex. A new biography, Entitled, which author Andrew Lownie says is based on four years of forensic research and hundreds of interviews with insiders, has been splashed on the front pages of the Daily Mail over the course of five days, and spells out why the duke is so unpopular, in an excruciating retelling of his public and private life.
There are the financial dealings: “It remains a mystery how Prince Andrew has been able to enjoy such an extravagant lifestyle,” notes Lownie, who goes on to write of a series of millionaire friends (“he took a four-day holiday in Tunisia paid for by Tarek Kaituni, a convicted Libyan gun-smuggler”), his years as a British trade envoy (“on an official Kremlin Museums tour, he was angling to be given a Fabergé egg”) and Palace denials (“to suggest the duke has personally benefited from his public work in Kazakhstan is utterly untrue”).
Stories about his sex life – the most serious of which have never been proven – are laid out in eye-popping detail.
One extract opens with the words of the late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – “He’s the only person I have met who is more obsessed with p***y than me” – continuing with Prince Andrew’s alleged predilection for jokes about anal sex and many women, from the model nicknamed the “Croatian sensation” to the unnamed “worst bunch of tarts” he was “forever dragging” up to dine with his mother (according to a member of Palace staff).
“He is easily the most boorish man I have ever met,” says one of Lownie’s sources.
As is so often the case, it is the smaller stories that conjure the big picture: the women whom he asked to smell the pâté at lunch before pushing her face in it as a joke; the fellow golfer who told Prince Andrew “good shot”, to hear the unmagnanimous reply: “That’s good shot, sir, for you.”
One member of staff was allegedly moved to other duties because the prince “disliked a mole on the man’s face” while another’s offence was said to have been “wearing a nylon tie”.
In a meeting with Boris Johnson, then the Mayor of London, he asked for fewer red traffic lights. “I’m the last person to be a republican,” Johnson is quoted as saying, “but, f***, if I ever have to spend another lunch like that, I soon will be.”
Buckingham Palace no longer represents the Duke of York, whose own remaining team have not commented on the book. But several sources have pointed out that much of it is taken from old news stories and documentaries.
One new story, that the Dukes of York and Sussex had a physical fight in 2013 and that – separately – Prince Andrew commented that Prince Harry’s marriage to Meghan Markle would not last, has been denied by Prince Harry’s team, in a carefully worded statement.
Perhaps the most ominous line to focus Palace minds comes from a former Buckingham Palace staff member, who says of the trade envoy position: “There are dozens, if not hundreds, more unwise connections to uncover from Andrew’s years in the role.”
Realistically, some in Palace circles concede, the “Prince Andrew question” will now fall to a future King William to solve once and for all.
Christopher Wilson, a royal historian and biographer, believes that under Prince William the policy of Elizabeth II – that the royal family must never criticise each other – will come to an end. He says: “I think to a large extent Charles has adhered to that as a safe policy – the moment you start tearing the family apart, where does it stop?”
Wilson continues: “With William it will be a different approach – he has hard-nosed ideas about how the royal family needs to appear in the frenzied social media world we now inhabit, and I think will be ruthless.”
Prince William, those around him attest, understands the reputational threat his uncle poses to the monarchy in a new generation and will not shy away from taking action if it needs to fall to him.
Kensington Palace declined to comment. But the Wales family was conspicuously absent from Easter Sunday at Windsor, where Prince Andrew held court outside St George’s Chapel.
If Prince Andrew was warmly invited to family events by Queen Elizabeth II, and patiently so under King Charles, he may find there are fewer – if any – moments where he is on camera in the future.
The mechanisms open to a future King William to go further are more extensive than is generally reported.
He has the option to decline to invite his uncle to his future coronation. It would be headline news, but there is a precedent: the Duke of Windsor was excluded from both George VI and Elizabeth II’s in the rather different circumstances of living in exile after abdication.
A king can, in certain circumstances, remove the Order of the Garter, which is in the monarch’s personal gift.
Parliament has greater powers – it can remove the dukedom via legislation.
A private members’ bill to “give the Monarch powers to remove titles”, mooted in 2022 after the people of York argued they did not want to be associated with the duke, fell flat. But a government bill to do the same job would doubtless fare much better.
Should another attempt, with the heft of the government behind it, be more successful, Prince Andrew’s name could eventually be struck off the Roll of the Peerage where it is currently listed under “York”.
In any case, the disgrace now associated with Prince Andrew makes it all but certain that his Dukedom will fall into abeyance when he dies. Upon his death, the title the Duke of York will revert to the Crown. It would customarily be bestowed on the monarch’s second son, where the time is right. But a grown-up Prince Louis is far more likely to become Duke of Edinburgh.
In agreement with the Palace, Prince Andrew has already stopped using the style of His Royal Highness. But that can be removed via Letters Patent – an ornate but relatively straightforward document issued on the advice of ministers and signed by the King.
One such Letters Patent, issued by George V in 1917, decreed that “the children of any Sovereign of the United Kingdom and the children of the sons of any such Sovereign and the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales” shall be called Prince or Princess, with the HRH style.
Thus Prince Andrew, the son of a monarch when he was born, is a Prince. But, should it be considered necessary, a new Letters Patent could change that, too.
But, says a source, such a “big deal” would best happen through legislation. “If there was a serious move to take [a title] away, particularly at that level, you do it through both houses [of Parliament],” they added.
None of this, one source emphasises, can be done at the whim of a king; the government is required to take action. But whether it is King Charles acting out of necessity in the near future or his son deciding to lance the boil in years to come, the combined brains of Buckingham Palace and Downing St could find a way.
“Is it likely at this point?” one source says. “No. But is it possible? Yes.”
One way for this to come to a head now, suggests Wilson, would be if MPs raise questions about Prince Andrew’s time as a trade ambassador, in the context of examining potential misuse of public funds. Any serious findings would mean “Charles could act in the best interests of preserving the monarchy”.
“The royal family is in a fragile state,” he adds. “Arguably in worse shape than during the Abdication when at least the problem got solved fast.
“Here we have seen a terrible shredding process going on, which downgrades our principal institution and sooner or later will render it an international laughing-stock unless something is done, quickly.”
For a Rroyal family on their summer holidays, renewed headlines about the Duke of York could not be less welcome.
The conversations over the Balmoral breakfast table could get interesting.