the times | Monday January 3 2022 23
Comment
Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826Spare a thought for family tainted by Andrew
If future generations turn away from constitutional monarchy, a good share of the blame belongs with the Duke of York
intelligent mitigations to hand. If the
encounters actually did happen, he
could have said “Yes, I met this girl,
we got on, I was divorced and lonely.
Was an idiot, but had no idea she
was so young, let alone that she was
coerced and paid, that’s terrible.”
If the events didn’t happen (none
of us can really know), he could have
expressed anxious puzzlement, great
sympathy and hope that her
real rapist would be identified. He
could, in short, have behaved like
a gentleman.
He could also, at any point in the
past decade, have expressed regret at
friendship with Epstein and
willingness to tell the FBI all he
knew about various homes, journeys
and fellow guests.
Instead he talked nonsense about
being “honourable” and never
sweating ( just to remind us that he
served in a war 40 years ago). He
oozed self-satisfaction. When his
tactic misfired he just hid, ignoring
the damage to his family and their
duties, clinging to his titles, stiffly
unrepentant.
Whatever happens in the legal
case, a new generation may well be
more inclined, when the Queen is
gone, to turn away altogether from
the useful idea of constitutional
monarchy. If that happens, a good
share of the blame belongs with the
oafish, selfish stupidity of her second
son. It’s miserable. It taints us all.monarchy dignified you have to
shudder at the oaf’s willingness to
make things worse just as her
platinum jubilee approaches. She has
not deserved this and it has long
been in her son’s power to make
things at least a few degrees less
toxic.
It was only last year that Giuffre
brought her civil suit against him but
right back in 2011 that friendship
with Epstein ended his “trade envoy”
job and three years later that he wasnamed by her. It takes stupidity and
arrogance to have spent so long
batting all this away but
unfortunately both qualities have
long hardened in the man who was
once an amiable, if not very bright,
naval flyer.
Foreign Office officials shudder at
the memory of his high-handedness;
where most royals have understood
changing attitudes and deliberately
become easier in dealings with
“commoners” the duke has become
stiffer, less likeable and less willing to
take advice from intelligent Palace
staff (one aide despairingly resigned
over his Maitlis interview, having
failed to stop it). There wereher of lying for money and
demanding the court consider
descriptions of her as a “money-
hungry sex kitten”.
Sailing blithely through that
disastrous Emily Maitlis interview,
he expressed no sympathy for
victims or shock at the revelations
about Epstein and Maxwell. He
stalled, shrugged, turned away.
So again, spare a thought for the
family. He has two brothers and a
sister who doggedly trudge on
through their public and charitable
duties, knowing that they and the
fragile dignity of constitutional
monarchy are being tainted by
association. His ex-wife blindly
supports him (and herself took
Epstein money) but his two
daughters must cringe as the heat
rises around the case and the royal
frog boils helplessly in the pan.
He has nieces and nephews too,
one couple working assiduously at
royal duties but another lurking in
Los Angeles and probably well
capable, any minute now, of emitting
some self-aggrandising comment on
it all that will further damage
the Crown.
That damage is the worst of this
Andrew-shaped disaster. It is not for
us to presume the feelings of the
Queen, who has always wisely kept
them to herself. But considering her
great age, new widowhood and
lifelong devotion to keeping theI
t has been a season for families:
close or extended, near or far,
gathered round tables, Zooms
and WhatsApps, sending friendly
scrawls on cards. Most families
are lucky because however tetchy,
argumentative, culpably boring or
politically delusional the outer
branches of your tribe may be, they
have probably not brought disgrace.
Most “black sheep” are harmless
wasters, welcomed home with a
cheque and some salty but hopeful
advice. At worst they simply vanish,
to be wistfully wondered about
at Christmas.
But sometimes one member’s
infamy (confirmed or strongly
suspected) is so public and shaming
that relatives feel tainted,
embarrassed, disbelieving and
defensive. Spare a thought for
parents, siblings, children, cousins.
There was real pathos in the
Ghislaine Maxwell affair as brothers
and sisters, raised like her by an
appalling father and his unresisting
wife, defended the youngest in the
face of evidence about her Epstein
years. None have had easy lives
themselves but they stand by,
worried and hopeless, trying not to
believe, well aware that raising their
heads above the parapet earns them
critical scrutiny.
We shall see how many keep faith
with the imprisoned sister and will
never know their real levels of
credulity. But a more immediate
infamy, and more dreadful for one
particularly blameless parent, is that
of Prince Andrew, Duke of York.
This year is likely to be the year that
this matter finally comes to a head.
He was a close friend and royal host
to Maxwell, and an “honourable” pal
to Epstein even after the man’s
conviction for procuring a child for
prostitution. He took their lavishhospitality, now airily saying that he
didn’t notice any improper artworks
in their ludicrously seedy mansions
and just assumed all the very young
girls were “staff’.
He is accused of accepting the
forced sexual services of Virginia
Roberts, now Giuffre, 24 years his
junior. He denies ever meeting “this
lady” and disputes the photographic
evidence; he let his lawyers accuseYou have to shudder
at the oaf’s willingness
to make things worse
Foreign Office officials
recoil at memory of
his high-handedness
Libby
Purves@lib_thinks