The arrest and questioning of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, on suspicion of misconduct in public office resulted from a complaint by the anti-monarchy group Republic.
It is a pivotal moment in the history of a new slimmed down royal family that is struggling to modernise itself, but one seen by some as an existential threat to the monarchy.
While King Charles III expressed deep concern and said that “the law must take its course”, vowing full support and co-operation with the police investigation, the royals clearly saw the writing on the wall and jettisoned Mountbatten-Windsor long before the stench threatened to overpower the institution.
British police arrested Mountbatten-Windsor, not for alleged sexual offences in connection with the well-known Virginia Giuffre case, but on suspicion that he may have passed sensitive state information to financier and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein during the time that the then-prince was Britain’s official trade envoy.
The US Congress legislated for the release of the Epstein files and many high-profile figures have been caught in the ever-widening net.
American authorities seemed to have shielded some of the world’s rich and powerful from ignominy within their own borders. The Epstein netherworld has proved a bigger scandal in Britain, and already snared a royal scalp.
Mountbatten-Windsor’s reputation had turned to dust following a disastrous 2019 television interview about allegations of sexual assault as well as questions about his relationship with Epstein. “The Firm”, so-called, slowly shoved him out the back door, and he stepped back from royal duties, was stripped of his titles last year and recently lost his 30-room grace-and-favour mansion near Windsor.
Mountbatten-Windsor is the latest in a line of royal skeletons to have come out of the cupboard, although his transgressions were known but papered-over by assiduous public relations efforts over the years.
In the age of celebrity, those scandals were often fatuous – Nazi uniforms, toe-sucking, divorces, extramarital affairs – but King Edward VIII’s 1936 abdication to marry an American divorcée triggered a constitutional crisis that stunned Britain and the Commonwealth because, as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Edward was forbidden from marrying a woman whose husbands were alive. The self-destructive king was given a bauble title and banished, dying in exile 36 years later.
Mountbatten-Windsor is smaller change. The eighth in line to the throne, he remains a counsellor of state, and theoretically able to stand in for the King. An act of Parliament would be required to remove him, and be agreed upon by all other Commonwealth realms where Charles is King. But unlike his brother the King, the former prince is not above the law.
He is yet to be charged with any crime, but police car footage following his arrest prompted French Revolution images of a royal being transported in a tumbril cart on the way to the guillotine.
With a new generation of royals coming through, Mountbatten-Windsor has already been cauterised by an institution well versed in survival and self-protection.
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