King Charles III Strips Prince Andrew Of All Royal Titles And Evicts Him From Royal Lodge Amid Epstein Scandal Fallout

Prince Andrew, once the rich and powerful “spare” to the throne, has been officially exiled by his brother King Charles III. Buckingham Palace has announced the duke “has lost his remaining royal styles, titles, and honours,” and “formal notice has now been served to surrender the lease” of Royal Lodge, his home in Windsor. Andrew will be known from now on as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. You won’t see him tossing the leaden drapes in the royal apartments anytime soon, but the eviction notice for his Windsor estate is the final slap for a man who has been outed for his pedophilic predilections and cronyism with the likes of Jeffrey Epstein.

The release from Buckingham Palace was short, terse, and, well… cold. It noted that because of the lease Andrew had held on Royal Lodge, he had “benefited from legal protection that would otherwise have been afforded to a tenant to remain in the property.” As such, King Charles is “taking steps to remove those protections so that Andrew is required to leave.”

It’s about time. Windsor, who married and divorced Sarah Ferguson and had two daughters, has long been berated by horrific claims of his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, to the point where any workable relationship with the monarchy was long since over. The duke denied it, and many of the royal family’s actions in the intervening years, like making Andrew the face of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, made it appear they were backing him up. Charles clearly isn’t one to prolong a crisis any longer than it already was. The statement’s use of “serious lapses of judgment” was a thinly veiled reference to Andrew’s recent past, in which it was alleged he sexually assaulted a 17-year-old and paid for it through a $17 million slush fund.

Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said it was “absolutely right that Andrew no longer has a royal home to live in and that he has been stripped of all his titles and honours.” He continued: “Prince Andrew disgraced his office and embarrassed the country and his continued association with the Royal Family damaged the monarchy. Today’s announcement has been a long time coming but it is right for the public and the Royal Family.” He’s not wrong. For too long, the situation Andrew found himself in seemed to gloss over the notion of human accountability in order to keep a non-working prince on an obscenely funded payroll, even as his claims were at best questionable. The monarchy has a PR problem to manage, and expunging Andrew is at least a move towards addressing it, though the question of whether Andrew will be allowed to keep his security, which was said to be a sticking point, remains to be known.