The Queen with Prince Charles and Prince Andrew at Buckingham Palace for Trooping the Colour on June 8, 2019. Photo / Getty Images
ANALYSIS:
In a royal family where scandal seems to rotate among its members with nearly metronomic regularity, one might have predicted that Tuesday's news that Prince Andrew had settled a sexual abuse lawsuit against him would soon be followed by a fresh, troubling disclosure about another royal.
Sure enough, not 24 hours later, London's Metropolitan Police announced an investigation into allegations that a charity led by Prince Charles offered to help with a knighthood and British citizenship for a wealthy Saudi in return for a donation. A spokesperson for Charles insisted that he had no knowledge of any deal.
For Queen Elizabeth II, it was a fraught start to a year that is supposed to celebrate her seven decades on the throne. And yet for all the questions surrounding the Prince's Foundation — which have already led to the resignation of its chief executive — the downfall of Prince Andrew is likely to leave a more lasting stain on the House of Windsor.
While Andrew, the Queen's second son, did not admit guilt in the settlement, he was forced to commend Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of raping her when she was a teenager, for her bravery in coming forward. He also agreed to pay her a sum that London newspapers reported to be more than £12 million (NZ$24.4m).
"We are in new waters," said Ed Owens, a historian who has written about the relationship between the media and the monarchy. "This kind of case has never been brought against a member of the royal family. That's why we're witnessing the family having so much trouble moving on from this."
The prospect of days of unsavoury testimony from Giuffre about her experiences with Andrew was evidently so sobering that it persuaded the prince and the royal family to put an end to the case, at very high cost in money and reputation, even after Andrew, 61, had vowed he would fight to clear his name.
For all the differences, the troubles of Andrew and Charles both raise murky questions about money and how it moves in the opaque world of royalty. Who will pay Andrew's settlement remains a mystery: analysts who track the family's wealth say it is unlikely that he could pay it without help from the Queen or others.
In the case of Charles, the question is whether his one-time closest adviser, Michael Fawcett, offered a Saudi billionaire, Mahfouz bin Mahfouz, help with his application for British citizenship, as well as a knighthood, while he was also soliciting him for a donation of £10m. Mahfouz has denied any wrongdoing.
"It's bringing to light the secrecy and silence that exists over the royal finances," Owens said. "The fact that there is this lack of transparency is going to become increasingly difficult in this social media-driven world. People are more sensitive to the obfuscation."
The Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday reported the allegations about a "cash-for-honours" deal at the Prince's Foundation last year, the charity commissioned an independent investigation, and Fawcett resigned as its chief executive.
The police said on Wednesday that they had enough evidence to open a formal investigation of whether the foundation violated a 1925 law that prohibits the sale of peerages or other royal honours. It is using the same unit that is investigating whether social gatherings at Downing Street violated coronavirus lockdown restrictions.
If Scotland Yard uncovers evidence that Charles knew about a potential quid-pro-quo, royal experts said, that would pose a grave risk to the 73-year-old heir to the throne. Even without the involvement of Charles, it could cast a harsh spotlight on the aggressive methods of the prince's lieutenants.
For the 95-year-old Queen, the threat to Charles is, in some ways, an even bigger headache than Andrew's disgrace. With her own recent health problems and her Platinum Jubilee celebrations looming, she has been moving to put the family's affairs in order. She declared recently, for example, that when Charles ascends to the throne, his wife, Camilla, should be known as queen.
But this week has served as a reminder of her fragility. On Wednesday, when two visitors to Windsor Castle asked her how she was, the Queen, smiling and clutching a walking stick, gestured to her legs, and said, "Well, as you see, I can't move."
"The clock is ticking," said Peter Hunt, a former royal correspondent for the BBC. "They're desperately trying to clear the path for Charles. Now, on that path is suddenly strewn Michael Fawcett."
Still, cash-for-honours scandals are a familiar, if unseemly, fixture in British politics. Both the Conservative and Labour parties have been ensnared in them. The allegations against Andrew, by contrast, are of a wholly different nature — amplified by the #MeToo movement and darkened by the prince's association with the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Having failed to persuade a judge to dismiss the case, Andrew faced the prospect of being interviewed under oath by Giuffre's lawyers. In her suit, she claimed that the prince had abused her, including subjecting her to "involuntary sexual intercourse", at Epstein's houses in New York and in the Caribbean.
"The imperative for Andrew was to settle before the deposition was taken in late March," said Daniel Taylor, a lawyer in London who has represented clients in privacy cases against the tabloids for phone hacking.
The fact that Andrew settled the case seems to have added to the sense of public scorn, even though out-of-court settlements are as common in Britain as they are in the United States. The headlines in London's tabloids summed up the prevailing disgust.
"His Final Disgrace," thundered the Sun. "Andrew cuts sex case deal … But there's no way back," said the Daily Express. "Royal wrong'un pays out to sex victim he's never met. As you do," said the Daily Star, referring to Andrew's assertion, in a misbegotten 2019 interview with the BBC, that he had "no recollection" of ever meeting Giuffre.
The Star ran the headline over a now-familiar photo taken in a London town house, which appeared to show Andrew with his arm around the girl's bare waist, as Epstein's former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, smiled in the background.
Buckingham Palace has banished Andrew to internal exile, stripping him of his honorary military titles and his official duties, and warned there would be no rehabilitation. But it left unclear whether the Queen, who earns more than US$30m (NZ$44.7m) a year from vast private real estate holdings, would help pay the settlement.
"The short answer is, he doesn't have enough," said David McClure, the author of Royal Legacy, a book on the monarchy's finances. "The Queen does have enough. And paying £10 million is a relatively small amount compared to the reputational damage that could be done to the family with a court case."
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Mark Landler
© 2022 THE NEW YORK TIMES