14 January 2022 The Guardian Weekly23
“He consorted for 10 years with
a couple whose lifestyle revolved
around the sexual exploitation by
Epstein of vulnerable women and
underage girls, a number of them
trafficked by Maxwell. The overt-
ness of this predatory way of life was
apparently inescapable. What do you
imagine when you travel in a private
plane nicknamed the ‘Lolita Express’?
And then you invite these degenerates
to stay at Balmoral?”
Of course, Andrew would not be the
fi rst obnoxious royal, nor the fi rst dis-
solute prince. But we are now living in
the third decade of the 21st century, in
a time of transition for the royal family
and society at large.
Ten years ago, in the pre-#MeToo
days, a movie mogul such as Harvey
Weinstein could terrorise and abuse
women with impunity. His friend
Epstein all but got away with rape and
sex traffi cking thanks to the political
infl uence he was able to exert.
And back in 2011 it may well have
seemed that Giuff re’s allegations were
destined to remain the outlandish cry
of an inconsequential person. Even
a photograph taken inside Maxwell’s
home could be dismissed as fake –
although how could a young woman
get access to an image of the prince
that no one else ha d ever seen to put
it in a mocked-up picture?
It never did add up , just like the
prince’s claim that he stayed with
Epstein for four days to tell him that
he could no longer be his friend.
It seems unlikely that the prince
will change his story, and if there is
a settlement it will doubtless come
with a non-acceptance of any personal
responsibility. Yet this is unquestion-
ably a watershed case. It is hard to
imagine any royal will again be aff orded
the indulgence that has accompanied
Andrew around the globe.
Although the British monarchy
will survive , it may well do so in a
more streamlined version with fewer
passengers. The days of overgrown
playboys trading on the family name
should be numbered. And if they are
it will be in no small part due to the
eff orts of a group of women from
largely humble backgrounds.
“I’m not going to be bullied back
into silence ,” Giuff re said seven years
ago. As even Prince Andrew would
have to concede, she has certainly
not allowed that to happen. Observer
ANDREW ANTHONY IS AN OBSERVER
REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; MAX MUMBY/INDIGO/GETTY WRITER
; SDNY/ZUMA
PR disaster
Prince’s TV
interview
backfi resAs a textbook
example of how
not to do damage
limitation it
is unlikely to
be surpassed
any time soon.
“You saw how
completely
untethered he
is to outside
reality,” sa id
the journalist
Catherine
Mayer. When
challenged on
his apparent
blindness
[to events
in Epstein’s
household] ,
Andrew came
up with an
explanation that
Mayer sees as
a self-indictment
rather than
exoneration. He
eff ectively said
that he lived
among servants
and was used
to not taking
any notice of
them – even,
presumably,
if they were
scantily clad
teenage girls.
“It shows his
extraordinary
arrogance and
disconnection,”
sa id Mayer.culpability is being used as his defence.
Even if Kaplan dismisses the case, it
will not clear the prince’s name, which
his friends insist is his prime aim.
And that’s the best-case scenario for
the prince. If, instead, Kaplan gives the
go-ahead for the case to be heard, then
the prince would be obliged to make
a deposition and appear in court. He
could in theory refuse to do either, but
again the optics would be disastrous.
However, if he did go to court, the
world’s media would be off ered a daily
diet of sordid details. And if he were to
lose the case, courtiers suggest he may
no longer be able to travel internation-
ally, for fear of criminal extradition.
As the royal expert and author
Robert Lacey puts it: “The prospect
of Virginia Giuff re’s allegations against
a senior member of the Windsors being
aired in court and reported around
the world is just impossible to con-
template from the point of view of
the royal family, and I’m quite sure
there would be some settlement out
of court.”G
iven that Giuff re has waited
over 20 years for recognition
of the damage that she sa id
was done to her, that settle-
ment would presumably involve a
large fi nancial fi gure – which raises
the question of who will pay. His
mother, thought to have bankrolled
his defence, would be his benefactor.
That brings into the spotlight the con-
tested question of whether her wealth
is private or a product of her position
as head of state, and therefore subject
to some kind of taxpayer oversight.
Monarchists insists her private
wealth and her public dispensation
are separate , but any settlement paid
by the Queen would provide repub-
licans with ballistic ammunition.
What seems extraordinary is that this
conclusion has been moving steadily
closer for more than a decade, and the
prince, and all those he has repeatedly
reassured of his innocence, have been
frozen in a state of denial.
Catherine Mayer , the author of a
biography of Prince Charles and co-
founder of the Women’s Equality
party, sa id that Buckingham Palace
did “something very stupid” when
the scandal fi rst surfaced in 2011.
Shortly after Andrew was photo-
graphed with Epstein in 2010 strolling
in Central Park, New York, following
the American’s release from prison on
charges of procuring a minor for prosti-tution, he was removed from his posi-
tion as international trade envoy and
redeployed. Mayer believes that deci-
sion was symptomatic of a wish to side-
step the issue rather than confront it.
“The whole story is a genuine
tragedy because of all the lives it has
ruined,” she sa id. “But there is also a
soap opera quality to it in that you see
characters ignoring things, of trying to
cover them up in the belief that they
will make things better, and you, as
the viewer, know that they’re going
to get worse. I’ve had that feeling
watching this.”
One problem, sa id Mayer, is that
there has been no comprehensive
strategy across the royal f amily on
what to do. Although its members talk
about the family as “the fi rm”, lending
the idea of disciplined business entity,
this, sa id Mayer, is a misconception.
“It has always been, and
increasingly in latter years, not one
institution but a series of institutions
or courts and households frequently
in confl ict with each other,” she sa id.
Royal observers note that staff
working for Prince Charles and Prince
William have briefed against Andrew.
A mixture of the Queen’s protective-
ness, the wary exasperation of other
royal households and Andrew’s stub-
born resistance to sound advice, left
him to forge his own ad hoc strategy.
It resulted in his fateful decision to
put his side of the story across in the
excruciating November 2019 BBC
t e l e v i s i o n i n t e r v i e w w i t h E m i l y M a i t l i s.
Looking back at that disastrously
revealing encounter, it is notable how
often the prince used Maxwell to try
to put some distance between himself
and Epstein (who hosted Andrew on
many occasions and gave large sums
of money to his ex-wife, Sarah Fergu-
son, and possessed 16 separate phone
numbers for the prince). At one point
Andrew describes the fi nancier as a
“plus one”.
But now that Maxwell has been
convicted of sex traffi cking a minor,
among other serious charges, it leaves
the prince with no one to saddle with
his poor judgment of character. In
among a catalogue of evasions and
failing memories, his one line of
consistent defence is that he was not
aware of anything untoward going
on in any of the Epstein or Maxwell
households at which he stayed. For
Lacey, among many other observ-
ers, this is simply not a credible
proposition.