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Two weeks ago he was Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Earl of Inverness and Baron Killyleagh, Knight of the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.
Now he’s just Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
On Thursday night, Buckingham Palace announced that King Charles III had begun the process of stripping his brother of his titles and honors and banishing him from the royal estate of Windsor, ending Andrew’s fall from grace over his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. By the next morning, Andrew’s name had already been removed from official roles in the nobility, an important step towards officially abolishing his title.
The royal family hopes the move will end years of scandal, but questions swirl about where Andrew, 65, will live, whether he could face further legal trouble and whether his ouster will appease the British public. Here we will answer some of them.
Where will Andrew sleep tonight?
The most likely location is Royal Lodge, a 30-room mansion in Windsor Great Park, west London, which has been Andrew’s home since 2003. The late Queen Elizabeth II had given Andrew, the third of her four children, the right to live in the lodge, and his 75-year lease was due to expire in 2078.
However, Buckingham Palace said in a statement on Thursday night that Mr Andrew had been given formal notice to relinquish his lease and would “move to alternative private accommodation”. It is understood he plans to transfer as soon as possible.
A royal source told CNN that Andrew will be given a house on the royal estate in Sandringham, Norfolk. Its vast estate on England’s east coast includes around 150 properties.
It is also where the royal family spends Christmas. A royal source said that before Thursday night’s announcement, Andrew had already been told he would not be welcome at the country retreat where he was vacationing.
Another source said Andrew may not move to Sandringham until after the Christmas holidays, as giving notice, waiving the lease and coordinating the move are expected to take time.
Yes, but I don’t know how much. According to British media reports, Mr Andrew is believed to have received an annual allowance of around £1 million ($130,000) from the late Queen after he retired from royal duties following a disastrous interview on BBC Newsnight in 2019.
According to the report, these payments initially continued under Charles’s government, but it is understood that the monarch has stopped providing the allowances.
Despite being stripped of his princely title, CNN understands that Andrew will continue to receive income from Charles.
Andrew’s finances have always been something of a mystery. His only publicly disclosed source of income is the pension he received while in the Navy from 1979 to 2001, which is said to have amounted to 20,000 pounds (about $26,000) a year.
Andrew may have lost his title, position and honor, but he is still eighth in line to the British throne.
There is a legal process to formally remove someone from the line of succession to the throne, but it will take time as consent from Commonwealth countries around the world is required.
The last time the protocol was invoked was in 1936 with the abdication of King Edward VIII.
Andrew and Sarah Ferguson divorced in 1996, but have been living together at Royal Lodge in Windsor since 2008. Andrew’s ex-wife returned to her maiden name earlier this month after he renounced the use of his royal titles, including Duke of York. She also plans to move out of Royal Lodge and make arrangements for a life on her own. We know she won’t be joining Andrew when he moves to Sandringham.
Her daughters Princess Beatrice, 37, and Princess Eugenie, 35, are non-working members of the royal family and will retain their titles as daughters of the sovereign’s son, following a directive issued by King George V in 1917.
Beatrice lives with her husband in the Cotswolds, about 160 miles from London, but has an apartment at St James’s Palace in the capital. Eugenie and her husband have a cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace, but spend much of their time abroad. Their living situation is not affected by their father’s defection.
The opposition Liberal Democrats have recently called on Andrew to give evidence to a parliamentary committee about his finances and the rent he may be paid to live at Royal Lodge.
So far, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government has refused to give MPs time to discuss Mr Andrew’s finances, despite public outcry for proper oversight.
This week, Conservative MP and chair of the public accounts committee Geoffrey Clifton-Brown wrote to the Crown Estates Commissioners seeking further information about the lease for Andrew’s Royal Lodge.
The commission has a responsibility to “maintain the best value for taxpayers’ money” and therefore “considers it reasonable to request further information about the status and basis of the Royal Lodge lease,” Clifton-Brown wrote.
Potentially. Activist group Republic, which calls for the abolition of the monarchy, said it was proceeding with a private prosecution of Andrew, saying: “If the government and police do not hold him accountable, we will.”
The group said it has directed its lawyers to investigate allegations of sexual crimes and misconduct in public office and to launch private prosecutions if necessary.
Virginia Giuffre, a prominent accuser of Epstein and his circle, claimed that Andrew had sexual relations with her three times when they were teenagers. In a recent memoir published posthumously, Giuffre wrote that Andrew “believed it was his birthright to have sex with me.”
Andrew reportedly paid Giuffre millions of dollars to settle a civil lawsuit she filed in 2022, even though he claimed he had never met her. He has repeatedly denied all allegations against him.
Giuffre died by suicide in April. On Thursday, Skye and Giuffre’s brother and sister-in-law, Amanda Roberts, told CNN that Giuffre “would have been happy” to learn that Andrew had been stripped of the title that helped him avoid responsibility.
“She’s going to be proud and she’s going to turn to her kids and say, ‘I did it. I caught the bad guy,'” Amanda Roberts said.
Virginia Giuffre’s family reacts to Andrew being stripped of his ‘prince’ title
It’s hard to say. Andrew is very unpopular with the British public. A YouGov poll published on Thursday found that 91% of Britons have a negative opinion of Andrew. Only 4% tested positive. In contrast, Britons generally like Prince William (76%) and Prince Charles (62%) and generally view the monarchy as an institution positively (56%).
If Andrew’s fall from grace began in earnest after his 2019 BBC Newsnight interview, the royal family has repeatedly tried to demarcate the scandal by removing him from public life, then stripping him of his military titles and patronage, then cutting him off financially, then relinquishing some of his titles, and now the king permanently banishing him from the palace as a pariah.
None of the measures could quell public opposition. Whether this time will be different remains to be seen.
Perhaps the reason Andrew’s scandal has lasted so long is because, to the public, his “punishment” seems out of proportion to the allegations he faces. Losing his title and favorite home may be a personal tragedy for Andrew, but it has elicited little sympathy from a public demanding proper accountability.
Activist group Republic said: “It doesn’t matter whether he is Prince Andrew or Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. We are still prosecuting him privately.”
