The Windsors are all about forgiving and
forgetting – when it comes to Prince Andrew
Marina Hyde
Some royal rehabilitations are faster than others. The
Duke of York’s jaunt with Kate and Wills must have set a new record
Tue 29 Aug
2023 14.44 BST
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Do all
“fusses” die down eventually, permitting the fussee to return to life largely
as they knew it, while the public scratches its head and tries to recall
precisely which scandal/multimillion dollar out-of-court settlement/Pizza
Express branch it remembers them from? The question arises after the return of
Prince Andrew to the royal tableau, driven last weekend by Prince William to
church near Balmoral, where the Windsors are currently all gathered (with just
the two notable exceptions). I must say I do think that William and Andrew
missed a trick not doing carpool karaoke as they rocked up to Crathie Kirk,
either to Take That’s Back for Good, or the Gary Puckett and the Union Gap’s
jailbait classic Young Girl.
Even so,
how fitting that this staged sighting should occur on the very weekend crowds
of people descended on Scotland in the hope of spying the Loch Ness monster.
You can imagine being there when the cry went up. Oh my God – there it is! Look
– you can see its head and neck in the front seat, right next to Prince
William! Quick, get a photo, even if “friends” will later claim it’s fake
because its fingers aren’t chubby enough.
Anyhow:
welcome back, Uncle Andy. Typically, royal rehab efforts move at a more glacial
pace. For example, the plan to make the British public fall back in love with
Prince Charles after his divorce from Princess Diana and her tragic death was
slated by courtiers to take years of slow and painstaking image work. But the
picture of Andrew being driven last Sunday by William and Kate, the family’s
biggest current stars, comes merely one year after the Duke of York finally
settled a civil claim against him by Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre was treated as a
sex slave by Andrew’s friend, the late international paedo trafficker Jeffrey
Epstein, and long alleged that she was sexually assaulted by Andrew three times
when she was 17. The duke denies everything, and his reported £12m settlement
did not contain an admission of guilt.
And there
he was on Sunday, next to William up front, with Kate relegated to creasing her
outfit on the back seat. As indicated, these royal stagings are so often
wordless scenes, so we don’t know the full story behind this picture. I suppose
it’s remotely possible that when the family were having breakfast that morning,
Prince William clocked the presence of Prince Andrew and hissed: “You need to
spend a very long time in church indeed. In fact, you know what? I’ll drive you
there myself.” Possible, but vanishingly unlikely. Andrew was, after all,
pictured exiting the church at the same time as the others, instead of
lingering for two or three hundred years after.
So this is
not some accident, some last-minute instance of Andrew calling shotgun, or of
the Waleses suddenly sighing: “OK, fine, jump in the front and we’ll give you a
lift.” Please remember that we are dealing with a family widely held to
telegraph fantastically complex and significant messages merely by their choice
of brooch or jacket colour, which the public is duly invited to parse for
meaning. So sticking a disgraced dimwit in the front seat of your car is not
just some random thing that happens of a Sunday morning. This is a planned and
choreographed moment, with William as the designated driver.
Even so,
doing Andrew’s reintegration at Balmoral does feel particularly on the nose.
Attendance here connotes the most particular closeness to the royal family’s
wellspring of ineffable majesty and authority – which is perhaps why Epstein
himself jumped at an invitation to Balmoral back in 1999, when Andrew had him
and Ghislaine Maxwell come and visit the castle. This is the version of staying
somewhere at Her Majesty’s pleasure that doesn’t involve sewage in your cell or
being allowed to take your own life because it would be better all round for
your Famous Men WhatsApp group. (And yes, I do know that Jeffrey and Ghislaine
were in New York jails so not technically Her Maj’s guests, but you get the
point.)
There were
probably 500 things Epstein would have objectively preferred doing than yomping
round Balmoral, even if 499 of them were illegal. But the frisson of tightness
with the royal family was worth journeying to the deck of the famously spartan
log cabin on the estate, and posing with Maxwell on the same bench on which the
late Queen Elizabeth II was frequently pictured (even if she wasn’t in
residence at the castle at the time). Epstein kept the photo of him and
Ghislaine at this cabin in his Manhattan mansion, which was eventually raided
by police. Thereafter it was presented as evidence in Maxwell’s trial, as part
of prosecutors’ attempts to show that she and Epstein were “partners in crime”.
The third
wheel on that trip was Prince Andrew himself. Presumably he took the photo?
That’s a typical question with those three, with the notorious picture of
Andrew with his arm round the hip of the then 17-year-old Virginia Roberts –
while Ghislaine smirks in the background – often believed to have been taken by
Epstein himself. Quite why the Prince and Princess of Wales wish to form a new
photo trio with Uncle Andy is a mystery. But it comes across as the clearest
signal that Andrew’s “banishment” from the family is the type we could all live
with: one where you get a free mansion, don’t have to work, and all your
significant rellies appear to believe your side of the story and are happy
enough to give you a helping hand. The comeback will be greater than the
setback – or at least of commensurate size.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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