Ever since he was spotted with a bruise across his face a fortnight ago, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been keeping a low profile behind closed doors at his home in exile.It wasn’t until last Friday that the former Duke of York broke cover in his car, driving out of the side entrance to Marsh Farm Cottage on the Sandringham Estate to take his dogs for a walk.But if the crimson and purple mark on the right side of his face had faded to a mottled patch of pink, then the questions about what caused it in the first place will simply not die down.What on earth was the King’s disgraced brother doing to end up in such a sorry state?Could he have tripped over one of the bulky items of stately furniture previously housed in spacious Royal Lodge in Windsor and now crammed into the smaller rooms at Marsh Farm?Was the contusion, as some sources indicated last week, the result of a ‘non-serious medical condition’?Or is it possible that the 66-year-old ex-prince was involved in some kind of dust-up, a behind-the-scenes altercation which has been quietly hushed up?For while police sources have denied any knowledge of such an incident, the Daily Mail has been told that Andrew was indeed involved in an unpleasant contretemps at his new home in the days before he was seen with the bruise.According to the Daily Mail’s well-connected royal source, the incident involving workers involved ‘a lot of bad language’ and ‘a punch being thrown’.It began, I am told, when one workman loudly made a very rude comment, as the royal source put it, about finding ‘a posher sort of paedophile round here’ as Andrew walked past.Name-calling, says the source, is something the father-of-two has been forced to endure ever since his dramatic fall from grace amid his friendship with the late paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and accusations by the late Virginia Giuffre that she was trafficked and forced to have sex with the erstwhile royal. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was spotted with a bruise on his face leaving Marsh Farm He had previously been seen with facial bruising in 2017 at the funeral of Countess Mountbatten of Burma in west LondonBefore her death by suicide in 2025, Mountbatten-Windsor paid Giuffre an estimated £12million in 2022 to settle her civil sexual assault lawsuit against him but, nevertheless, has always denied her claims and any wrongdoing.According to the source: ‘He’s fair game to hecklers these days though he doesn’t usually take it well.’Last August, the Daily Mail has been told, Andrew launched ‘a rant laden with blue language’ at workers who called him names while installing speed bumps on the approach to Royal Lodge. And just last month he was caught up in a security scare while walking his late mother’s beloved corgis when he was approached by a balaclava-clad man who allegedly ran towards him.The man, 39-year-old Alex Jenkinson, has since been charged with using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour towards the shamed father-of-two. His case will be heard at Westminster Magistrates’ Court next month where Andrew is due to give evidence.It’s certainly not the first time he has appeared in public sporting a right royal shiner.The last was in 2017 at the funeral of Countess Mountbatten of Burma in Knightsbridge, west London, when the then Prince of Wales appeared to gesture, quizzically, towards his younger brother’s face.Buckingham Palace refused to comment on the cause of the Duke of York’s 2017 injury. A royal source has told the Daily Mail that sometime that year Andrew received a blow during a physical fight with one of his many business associates but whether the two are connected is not known.Nor, if the recent fisticuffs claim is true, would it be the only example of hot-headed ‘Handy Andy’ coming to blows – or pushes and shoves – with underlings during altercations over the years.‘He is quick to anger and will provoke those he perceives as weak or lesser, first by shouting and then often getting physically close,’ says the source. ‘He can then prod and push all the while expecting the other to back down.‘Coming to a punch is rarer these days but when he was younger it was more commonplace, even during his Navy days.’Indeed, a second royal source has told the Daily Mail of reports of a spat involving Andrew, during his youthful days at sea, after he ordered a group of shipmates to work between the watches at night but didn’t supervise them.Another officer, lower in rank than Andrew, is said to have been ‘so angry on behalf of the men that he went round with a spanner and threatened Andrew’, an incident said to have ended in ‘a bit of fisticuffs’. US singer Meat Loaf with Prince Edward in 1987 during filming of the BBC’s It’s A Royal Knockout, when a scuffle involving the then Prince Andrew is said to have occurredAnd a former associate has told me how he was once on the receiving end of Andrew’s ire after ‘asking him to pipe down’ when the ‘bored’ prince became ‘loud and jokey’ during a theatre performance he was attending in an official capacity.‘At the end he pushed me against the doorway and “suggested” that I should learn some manners among other things before storming off and ignoring a receiving line,’ says the associate. ‘He is probably the most obnoxious and entitled man I have ever encountered.’Then there were claims – denied by Prince Harry – made by royal biographer Andrew Lownie in his book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, that he and Andrew got into a fight at a family gathering in 2013 and that he left his uncle with a bloody nose.Other bust-ups appear to have arisen largely from situations in which Andrew felt he wasn’t being given due deference.A long-running rivalry with the late Queen’s Private Secretary Lord Geidt is said, in 2015, to have ended in an episode of ‘shouting and finger-prodding’ so heated that while Geidt stood with his hands behind his back and ‘remained calm throughout and refused to engage’, Geidt’s own secretary alerted palace security.Andrew’s fury towards his mother’s long-suffering loyal servant centred on what he saw as his role in plans to strip down the monarchy to just core family members, thereby clipping the wings of House of York members.During the late Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012, Geidt was said to have orchestrated the slimmed-down balcony appearance of just the Queen, Prince Charles, Camilla, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, a move said to have been seen by Andrew as a ‘dagger to the heart’.Another incident is said to have occurred after Andrew failed to get Geidt to include a Pitch@Palace event in the late Queen’s engagement diary. This was the programme that he launched in 2014 to help promote UK business ventures and was suspended after his disastrous BBC Newsnight interview in 2019.‘Andrew had been desperate to get her involved but was repeatedly blocked by Geidt,’ says the Daily Mail’s royal source.‘Andrew got irate leading to a lengthy showdown, complaints that Geidt didn’t show him enough deference and a threat to have his job.’ Andrew is said to have been at the centre of a number of incidents near Marsh FarmIn the end, Andrew did persuade his mother, as a personal favour, to attend a 2016 Pitch@Palace event at St James’s Palace despite it clashing with a state visit by the president of Colombia. According to the source: ‘Andrew later visited Geidt to gloat.’Three years later, in 2019, the then duke is said to have had a ‘physical altercation’ with Vice-Admiral Sir Tony Johnstone-Burt – who at the time was Master of the Royal Household – when Andrew’s request to hold a Pitch@Palace event at Buckingham Palace was denied.The incident, recounted by the Daily Mail’s Robert Hardman in his book Elizabeth II, was described as a ‘kinetic blow’ which caused astonishment within palace circles. ‘It was a routine household matter,’ said a senior staff member who spoke to Hardman. ‘The duke wanted to have a reception and there wasn’t any room. It was as simple as that. Tony said he’d have to wait his turn like anybody else and the duke went for him.’Prince Philip was so appalled by the episode he wrote to Sir Tony apologising for his son’s boorish behaviour. The late Queen meanwhile is said to have refused to discipline him over this and other incidents but, according to the Daily Mail’s royal source, ‘also took no action against staff who meted out rough justice on her favourite son’.Even in childhood, Andrew became embroiled in the occasional fracas with palace flunkeys. As a boy, says the royal source, he was dumped in a pile of manure after Royal Mews staff got fed-up with his antics.‘One courtier literally bopped him on the nose when he could take no more. Others managed to “accidentally” catch the side of his head with elbows and trays.‘One tripped him up in the mud after enduring several days of target practice from Andrew’s new catapult.’Whenever any of these incidents came to the ears of the Queen she is said to have shrugged them off and declared: ‘I dare say he deserved it.’Another bizarre scuffle occurred back in 1987 during filming of the BBC’s It’s A Royal Knockout, a one-off charity event at Alton Towers featuring members of the Royal Family including Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, Prince Edward – who masterminded the medieval-style fun tournament – and Princess Anne, as well as an array of celebrities including Cliff Richard, John Travolta and singer Meat Loaf.According to royal biographer Andrew Lownie, a jealous Andrew allegedly tried to push Meat Loaf into the set’s water-filled moat because he thought he was flirting with Fergie, who he had married the year before.The US rocker, who died in 2022, retaliated by grabbing 27-year-old Andrew who allegedly told him: ‘You can’t touch me. I’m royal’. Meat Loaf later claimed he replied: ‘I don’t give a s*** who you are.’If palace staff were once on hand to smooth over such escapades then, since being stripped of his rank and titles, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has very much been left to stand on his own two feet.According to the royal source, last month’s security scare on the Sandringham Estate ‘would never have ended up in court normally’.‘Andrew had a security officer with him, the man was removed from the scene swiftly and that would normally have been it,’ says the source.‘The Sandringham incident has gone further than others because there was no one from the royal household around to ensure that the matter was smoothed over and swept under the carpet.’There are concerns in some quarters that Andrew’s lonely new existence at Marsh Farm, where he is living for free, has left him exposed to these kind of incidents.Security measures were beefed up before he moved in last February with the addition of CCTV cameras and motion-sensor lighting as well as a six-foot perimeter fence. Stripped of his taxpayer-funded security, he is now reliant on his brother to foot the bill for the men who guard him.Whether or not his recent bruised face is anything to do with the ill-will of others may never be made public. But, when push comes to shove, Andrew is more than capable of putting his own dukes up.