King Charles III has stripped his younger brother Prince Andrew of his remaining royal titles and ordered him to leave his Windsor residence, Buckingham Palace on Thursday. The move follows mounting public and media pressure over Andrew’s association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Under the king’s decision- an exceedingly rare step in the modern monarchy- Andrew will no longer be addressed as a prince and will instead go by the name Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. He has also been directed to vacate the Royal Lodge, his longtime residence near Windsor Castle, reports AP.
The palace faced growing calls to remove Andrew from the Royal Lodge after he relinquished the Duke of York title earlier this month. The pressure intensified following new details about his ties with Epstein and renewed allegations from Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of Epstein’s victims.
Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, released last week, revisited her accusations of sexual abuse.
Buckingham Palace said, “These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him. Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.”
The removal of the prince or princess title is almost without precedent. The last such instance dates back to 1919, when Prince Ernest Augustus lost his British titles for siding with Germany during World War I.
Giuffre’s brother, Skye Roberts, expressed his family’s sense of justice following the palace’s decision. He told the BBC, “Today, an ordinary American girl from an ordinary American family brought down a British prince with her truth and extraordinary courage.” Giuffre died by suicide in April at age 41.
Earlier this month, newly surfaced emails showed Andrew had continued communicating with Epstein long after claiming he had severed ties. Shortly afterward, Giuffre’s book Nobody’s Girl was published, alleging that she had sex with Andrew when she was 17 and describing him as behaving as though “having sex with me was his birthright”.
The 65-year-old royal has consistently denied the accusations but stepped back from public duties following a widely criticised BBC interview in November 2019. In 2022, Andrew reached a multi-million-dollar out-of-court settlement with Giuffre in New York.
While the agreement included no admission of guilt, he acknowledged Giuffre’s suffering as a victim of sex trafficking.
