When is a duke not a duke? When he’s Prince Andrew. Recently, the king’s brother has agreed not to use any of the titles and honors bestowed on him—except for “prince,” to which he is entitled by birth—because of the continuing fallout from his relationship with the pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. No longer will he call himself the Duke of York, or be a knight of the garter (KG), a personal honor given by the monarch. He had already agreed not to be addressed as “his royal highness” or “HRH.”
This is not enough. Andrew, now 65, has spent his entire life trading on his aristocratic titles, and there is one way to stop that from happening again: Britain’s Parliament should formally remove them. There is precedent for this. In 1917, the Titles Deprivation Act was passed to deal with troublesome royal cousins who sided with Germany in the First World War. Much like Charles Edward of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Andrew too should lose the right to put Prince on his stationery.
In 2019, Andrew told the BBC’s Emily Maitlis that he had severed his friendship with Epstein nine years earlier, after the latter’s conviction for sex offenses, during a four-day stay at Epstein’s New York townhouse.
Continue Reading on The Atlantic
This preview shows approximately 15% of the article. Read the full story on the publisher's website to support quality journalism.