Is Andrew the British Monarchy’s Marie Antionette?
- Nicoletta Gullace
- 10 minutes ago
- 7 min read
It is not surprising that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has ignored Congress’ invitation to testify about his friendship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. No longer protected by customary royal immunity at home and asked to bear witness in a republic whose fascination with royalty is equaled only by its skepticism of hereditary rule, Andrew would be unlikely to emerge unscathed. While Britain’s monarchy has figuratively decapitated Andrew to save itself, Mountbatten-Windsor’s behavior, the King’s actions, and the public response to the scandal illuminate this potentially revolutionary moment in post-Elizabethan history.
Like Marie Antoinette, Andrew has become a symbol of aristocratic decadence, highlighting the chasm between popular and elite morality and acting as a lightning rod for criticism of the monarchy. Even as the Labour Government summons Charles to tame a volatile American president with his royal mystique, the King himself has “let in daylight upon magic” by stripping his brother of hereditary privilege. If Andrew is arguably the royal family’s Marie Antoinette, Charles, in assuaging public opinion, could be its unwitting Robespierre – demystifying the monarchy at a diplomatic moment when Britain appears to need the Crown more than ever.
Ancien Regime Decadence & the Welfare State
Virginia Giuffre’s incendiary claim that Epstein trafficked her to Prince Andrew as an underaged “sex toy” was old news when her memoir, Nobody’s Girl, hit the bookstores in October 2025. Accounts of Andrew’s friendship with Epstein had circulated since the publication of incriminating photographs in 2011, reemerging periodically until the story blew up following Epstein’s suicide in prison while awaiting trial for child sex trafficking.
In a “car-crash” tv interview with BBC’s Emily Maitlis, Andrew tried to clear his name, refuting Giuffre’s rape story by attesting he was at a Pizza Express in Woking at the time. The Newsnight interview caused such uproar that Andrew was forced to resign as a working Royal.
Giuffre subsequently sued the prince in a U.S. court for sexually violating her as a minor. In writing about her alleged encounters with Andrew, Giuffre dwelled on his princely status, depicting him as a privileged lord, enjoying sexual access not unlike the droit du seigneur, once reputedly allowed to feudal barons.
In her memoir, Giuffre reflected that the Duke took her body with a sense of “entitlement,” “as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright.” Indeed, the story never completely faded because the sexual liberties once permitted to noblemen no longer seemed acceptable. Gone were the days when Charles complained that he was the only Prince of Wales in British history not permitted a mistress and William’s reputed affair with Rose Hanbury has never simmered in the background of his marriage, as Charles and Camilla’s did for decades. Royal sexual morality has tightened up even in our own day, making “Randy Andy’s” permissive morality seem all the more reprehensible as ancient aristocratic sexual codes have begun to change – at least in public.
Although Andrew vociferously denied Giuffre’s allegations each time they arose, the release of the Epstein papers fortified her claims. Andrew, despite his protestations otherwise, had obviously continued to cavort with Epstein, writing to him after his release from prison, “we’ll play again soon!!!”
The Duke’s penchant to “play” with Epstein demonstrated a sense of royal impunity at odds with the idea of a service monarchy that reconciled hereditary privilege with the values of the post-war Welfare State. The Queen understood this instinctively. In her first speech to the Commonwealth on her 21st birthday, she stressed her vocation as a monarch anointed to serve her people.
“Air-miles Andy,” as he was known during his inglorious ten-year stint as UK trade envoy, seemed to have understood “service” exactly backwards – practicing a form of noblesse oblige where paupers served princes, and not the other way round. While the working royals soberly cut ribbons, Andrew reputedly skipped trade meetings to play golf and even fired an underling for wearing a nylon tie.
While many of Andrew’s emails were written years apart, the cascade of incriminating documents released with the Epstein files presented a telescopic image of Andrew’s alleged misbehavior. Whether imploring Ghislaine Maxwell to fix him up with “new inappropriate friends,” or reassuring Epstein that “we’re both in the same boat,” the Epstein files revealed the Duke’s louche attitude towards the procurement of women and a tendency to regard sexual antics as largely a PR problem.
Revelations that Prince Andrew and fellow reprobate Peter Mandelson fronted a prominent child protection patronage during the very time they were cavorting with Epstein has ignited further outrage over royal hypocrisy.
Queen Elizabeth initially stood by her disgraced son, yet in 2022 she hedged her bets, reputedly paying £12 million to settle Giuffre’s lawsuit. Stripping her favorite of military honors, royal patronages, and his beloved HRH styling, the Palace hoped to end the matter before her upcoming Platinum Jubilee. Although Andrew conceded no admission of guilt, rumors of the massive payout garnered immense publicity, insinuating, as they did, that the Queen may have given credence to the charges.
A raft of publications in 2025 show that the Giuffre settlement in no way quieted the case. Indeed, Giuffre’s accusations took on rocket-fuel with the almost simultaneous publication of Andrew Lownie’s book, Entitled—a tale of the arrogance, scams, and exorbitant debt generated by Andrew and his ex-wife “Fergie,” transforming the couple from royal reprobates into modern day Marie Antionettes.
As Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves prepared to default on Labour’s promise not to raise taxes and ordinary Britons struggled to pay their sky-high rents and crushing mortgages, the royal family were thrust into a position resembling that of the French monarchy on the eve of revolution. Britons, enduring a crippling cost of living crisis, learned that Andrew and Fergie inhabited a thirty room mansion where, for 22 years, they paid a rent of one peppercorn, ordering a nightly side of beef that was thrown away in the morning, often untouched.
Andrew alone stands accused of illicit sex with a minor, but the attention he has brought to royal extravagance has precipitated scrutiny of the family’s unearned income. Despite the working royals’ extensive charitable work, Andrew’s disgrace has exposed the fact that British royals often don’t pay rent, are taxed by their own consent, and receive a hefty payout from the Sovereign Grant.
Although punishing Andrew has met with public approval, it has not shielded the royal family, which the tabloids accuse of doing “too little too late.” Andrew and Fergie’s unrestrained behavior illuminates the danger of unearned wealth in a society where many doubt that honors and rewards should be bestowed for no other reason than being born the second son of the Queen of England.
Has Andrew’s Decapitation Backfired?
Fittingly, Charles stripped his brother of all titles, honorifics, and peerages, allowing him to keep but one– a campaign medal from the Falklands War-- the only decoration he earned through personal merit rather than familial connection.
Charles’ decision to act, however, was not undertaken without danger to the monarchy. Indeed, if titles and duchies, garters and sashes, and even Andrew’s status as a “prince of the blood” were so easily removed, how meaningful are these aristocratic signifiers? The same blood runs in the veins of Andrew and Charles, and yet, somehow, Andrew’s is no longer blue.
To protect his own constitutional role and the legitimacy of his family in the eyes of the people, Charles stripped Andrew of his birthright, destabilizing the idea of hereditary monarchy. Indeed, once Andrew was no longer a prince, he was vulnerable to censure in Parliament and promptly arrested for passing confidential trade documents to Epstein, further embarrassing the royal family, who Lownie loudly accused of a “cover-up.”
Without the Divine Right of Kings and lacking an unbroken hereditary line, how can the British royal family legitimize itself but with the alchemy of duty, virtue, and “historical continuity” that Elizabeth spun into gold during her 70 year reign?
Questions of privilege and entitlement challenge the royals, whose quotidian tasks justify their receipt of the Sovereign Grant, not to mention the vast and shadowy income from rents and leases. Although Charles straddles a kingly role made newly relevant by the diplomatic demands of an American pseudo-monarch, assuaging intense domestic pressure to remove his brother from public life has challenged an institution that, as Bagehot noted, thrives on mystery.
As commoner Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor stewed in his palatial “Lodge” awaiting eviction, his footmen were still ordered to call him “Your Royal Highness.” Amazon packages and cases of champagne arrived with dizzying frequency, but public outrage over the lease didn’t fade in a climate where the government seemed unable to build affordable housing yet many members of the extended royal family enjoyed rent-free apartments in palaces and crown estates.
Although Andrew is now relegated to Marsh Farm, the least grand of the houses on the Sandringham compound, it is still a renovated 5 bedroom building, serviced by staff, including a cook, cleaners, security, and a valet – luxuries few Britons could ever hope to afford.
Revelations about Andrew’s decadent lifestyle give momentum to republicans who wish to abolish the monarchy. The deluge precipitated by the Giuffre affair has spilled into awkward questions about the difference between the public and private purse, the existence of rent-free “grace and favor” apartments, and speculation about what it means to “own” something outright as King of England.
William and Charles, for all their disagreements, want a “slimmed down,” “modern” monarchy, free from troublesome hangers-on. Yet without telegenic royals Harry and Meghan, or the jolly hats of Beatrice and Eugenie, the slimmed down monarchy begins to look rather dull, as it did this past Easter with so many missing faces. William’s excommunication of the York sisters may come to seem unnecessarily ruthless, given that the girls were little older than Epstein’s victims when they lunched with him at their mother’s behest. While Kate still exudes the essential glamour of a royal princess, a “modern monarchy,” shorn of its reprobates, its celebrities, and it’s indelible hereditary mystique, may, in all its virtue, seem hardly worth the cost.
Nicoletta Gullace is an Associate Professor of British and Women’s History at the University of New Hampshire, currently in the UK as a Fellow-in-Residence at the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University. Her work focuses on the Edwardian era, World War I, and the American fascination with Aristocratic culture and the British Royal Family, leading to publications on the popularity of Downton Abbey in the U.S. and a Journal of British Studies forum on the Death of Queen Elizabeth. She is currently editing a collection on “Histories of Bodily Autonomy” and researching a book on the Marriage of Queen Elizabeth and the Commonwealth.
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