Nothing will ever be the same for the disgraced royal or the other Windsors. He can still live in Royal Lodge, but in this new era can he live with himself?
T
he saga of Andrew Windsor, the ex-Duke, who henceforth will only be known as plain old Prince, may have finally reached its end. At least the rest of the Royal family will hope so. But even that is likely to depend on what may further emerge from any more releases of Epstein files, letters, records and emails in the US. His image, such as it remains, may yet be tarnished further.
It is the loss of titles that will certainly hurt him most. Andrew has not formally lost them – removal of his dukedom requires an act of parliament, which neither government nor Buckingham Palace will want, taking up as it would embarrassingly public lengths of time – and he can’t shed his princely tag since he indubitably is the son of a monarch.
But he won’t be able to use them publicly or privately and that will be a terrible blow to his sense of entitlement and status. As one of his former dates told Andrew Lownie for his recent book, Entitled, he always introduced himself to her friends as the Duke of York, saying: “It struck me how impressed he was with who he is, or how impressed he wanted others to be. Every joke always ended with: ‘because I’m the Duke of York’. He tells the most pathetic jokes. He finds poo cushions funny.”
