What Does Andrew Being ‘Unstable’ Really Mean?

Are the palace making plans for Andrew?

Prince Andrew’s secret midnight eviction from Royal Lodge, the drip-drip of fresh Epstein revelations, and a widening split between King Charles and Prince William over how to handle the “Andrew problem” have combined to make this another crazy and chaotic week for covering the royals.

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The story of the week, of course, is Prince Andrew. On Monday night, under cover of darkness, he was finally kicked out of Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park and moved to Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. The move was accelerated after the King became irritated by Andrew’s habit of riding and driving around Windsor, mugging and waving at photographers, something Charles came to see as a provocation at the very moment the Epstein files were dragging his brother back into the headlines.

Personally, I would have thought Andrew had done far worse things than wave at photographers, and the King’s failure to firmly tackle this issue or years has been an abject lesson in bad news management.

Three years ago, most people had only the vaguest idea where Andrew lived; a small percentage of people gave a damn, but not the general commonweal.

It was Charles who first turned Andrew’s housing arrangements into a rolling national story by endlessly publicizing in the newspapers how he wanted him out of Royal Lodge.

Now, no sooner had Andrew arrived at his “stopgap” new home, Wood Farm, than briefing began that it might prove very hard to get him out again and into Marsh Farm, the smaller house nearby which is supposed to be his permanent home.

I am told that building work at Marsh Farm appears to have stalled.

Shunting Andrew from house to house will keep this story alive. My suggestion to Charles would be to leave him at Wood Farm and be done, but just as he made Royal Lodge a story two or three years ago by endlessly briefing the press that Andrew had to move out, Charles is once again turning his brother’s living arrangements into front-page news.

In the meantime, after Andrew’s arrival in Norfolk, servants on the Sandringham estate were told they did not have to serve him if they felt uncomfortable. There is already a long list of staff who have taken up that option. Some reports have described it as a “strike.”

Andrew continues to dominate the U.K. Sunday front pages this morning as the newly released Epstein files keep throwing up extraordinary stories that guarantee there is no waning of public interest.

One story reports that Jeffrey Epstein and Andrew entertained four young women at a private dinner at Buckingham Palace, with Epstein describing one of the girls in email correspondence as “very cute.”

Another batch of documents laying out allegations from a second woman who says she was trafficked to the U.K. by Epstein in 2010 for a sexual encounter with Andrew at Royal Lodge and later taken on a tour of Buckingham Palace is being scoped by Thames Valley Police, who cover Windsor.

Andrew denies all allegations of wrongdoing and previously settled a civil case with Virginia Giuffre without admitting liability.

The Metropolitan Police, who have been repeatedly urged by campaigners and the anti-monarchy group Republic to reopen a full criminal inquiry into Andrew, said this week that no new Met investigation has been launched into him, despite the latest document dump.

Instead, the picture is of overlapping pieces of police “assessment” work in different jurisdictions. What we need is political pressure for a single clear-cut criminal investigation into Andrew personally.

Few would envy the situation facing Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’s daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie. Whatever you think of them, it must be pretty humiliating to discover there is an email from your mother to a convicted sex offender joking that you are on a “shagging weekend” with your boyfriend.

A friend of Eugenie told me this week that “it is the understatement of the year” to say this is a difficult situation, adding, “Of course they feel let down by the new revelations. Eugenie’s work with The Anti-Slavery Collective is super important to her and she feels she’s going to have to make a choice.”

That choice may already have been made for Eugenie. The Anti-Slavery Collective, which she co-founded in 2017, has just launched, the culmination of 18 months’ work, a major report titled “Fake Fashion: A Human Rights Scandal” into the criminal networks and modern slavery behind counterfeit designer goods.

Yet at the London launch last week, Eugenie was nowhere to be seen, and she was not mentioned in the press materials, even though she remains prominently listed on the charity’s website as co-founder and figurehead. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that her parents’ Epstein entanglements are now directly threatening the work she cares most about.

Beatrice, of course, made a conspicuous show of support for her father as recently as 27 January, when she was photographed taking her daughter Sienna riding with Andrew in Windsor Great Park. Three days later, the latest tranche of Epstein files was released. That ride, I am told, will not be repeated.

More broadly, both princesses have already signalled where they stand, at least publicly. They chose to join King Charles at Sandringham for Christmas without their parents, a move that went down badly with Prince William.

As I have been reporting for some time, Charles and William have starkly different ideas about what is appropriate when it comes to rehabilitating, or even merely accommodating, renegade members of the family.

William is personally fond of Beatrice; he is cooler on Eugenie, who has maintained a friendship with Harry and Meghan, visited the exiles in California and been publicly pictured with them.

Personal feelings aside, he regards the King’s embrace of the two young princesses as further evidence of what he sees as Charles’s chronic weakness when it comes to Andrew.

William’s view of the core issue is straightforward: we do not yet know the full extent of Beatrice and Eugenie’s involvement, if any, in Epstein’s world or their father’s business networks, and until that is resolved, they should not be anywhere near the public-facing royal family.

Friends of William have told me that he would have “no hesitation” in letting it be known that Andrew should face a “proper” police investigation if he were king, and that he genuinely believes the monarchy cannot remain popular and respected if it does not at least give the appearance of respecting the principle that no man is above the law.

By contrast, those close to the King believe he has no desire whatsoever to see his brother subjected to a full-blown police inquiry.

One former royal staffer put it bluntly: “The monarchy has shielded Andrew from any accountability for his actions for decades. That’s not about to change.”

EXCLUSIVE: Beatrice is So Stressed Out She Can’t Eat, and Eugenie Fears She Will Have To Cut Ties With Her Parents Forever To Preserve Her Charity Career

A friend of the King told me the entire situation is “a nightmare”, adding: “If he ends up in court, it’s only going to get worse. He could inflict enormous reputational damage on the institution.”

The palace’s official line that Andrew should “consult his conscience” and decide for himself whether to cooperate with U.S. authorities is, in reality, a deliberately non-committal workaround.

Charles knows perfectly well that Andrew is never going to submit voluntarily to questioning on either side of the Atlantic, today’s London Sunday Times admits as I reported last night.

Ex-Prince Andrew is Unstable, Royal Sources Say

It allows the King to pretend that the matter is out of his hands while avoiding even the mildest public affirmation of the basic principle that his brother should be treated like anyone else.

During a walkabout in Dedham, Essex, a man in the crowd, filming on his phone, shouted, “Charles? Charles? Should the police be investigating Andrew?” The King did not respond and walked on, but the question cut through.

In recent weeks, there has been a notable uptick in briefing suggesting that the King fears Andrew could harm himself, with suggestions he is suicidal or unable to cope. Now, in a striking piece in The Sunday Times, palace sources go further, describing Andrew as “unstable”. There has been some speculation in the comments of my Substack that this could be a softening up exercise for some kind of psychiatric commital.

While the House of Windsor has been trying and failing to “contain” Andrew, Harry and Meghan chose this moment to project a carefully curated image of domestic normality from sunny California.

Meghan posted a video this week showing her walking into Harry’s home office with a box of chocolate bars from her As Ever collaboration with Los Angeles chocolatier Compartés.

Harry, barefoot and in a white polo shirt, picks the white chocolate bar with flower sprinkles and hemp hearts, holds it up and says, “Yes, please. Thank you! Love you!” as their dog snoozes at his feet and family photos and military patches are visible behind him.

The clip promotes Meghan’s latest white chocolate for Valentine’s Day, but it also, very deliberately, offers fans a portrayal of relaxed, affectionate, middle-class home life.

Whatever you think of them, it’s a notable visual contrast to the images of Andrew on all fours over an unidentified woman in the Epstein material.

Finally, a word about the week ahead, which is set to be dominated by Prince William’s visit to Saudi Arabia. I owe all my readers (and YouTube viewers) an apology on this one. I had somehow convinced myself this was going to be a joint trip by William and Catherine and have been saying so for weeks. In fact, Catherine was never scheduled to go.

When Kensington Palace published the official announcement yesterday, it was clear that only William is travelling.

After that, I dug out a published story dating back to 21 January which also said it was just William going. In other words, the mistake is mine: there is no skulduggery, no last-minute pull-out by Catherine; she simply was never on the trip in the first place, and I wasn’t paying enough attention. There has been a lot going on but that’s no excuse and I humbly proffer my apologies, and regret that we won’t find out the extent of Catherine’s facility with Arabic after all!