The Queen protected Andrew – and all he’s done is trash her legacy

After his divorce from Sarah Ferguson in 1996, the then Prince Andrew was at a loose end.

A mutual friend told me that he had also realised that “life as the Duke of York without a Duchess was a lonely business”. All eyes were on his elder brother, Prince Charles, stepping out in the open for the first time with Camilla Parker Bowles. Andrew by contrast was a lone figure, flanked by hangers-on at Ascot, reliant on wealthy friends for social sport. Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein had filled the gap, inviting him to glitzy parties in the US. Conversely, the dynamic duo became Andrew’s supportive “gang” at London summer events and society weddings.

Observing all of this was the late Queen Elizabeth, still reeling from the messy divorce of Charles and Diana and her tragic death in 1997. With those family fractures still fresh, the monarch, who was also a matriarch, faced the problem of what to do with a listless second son. So she pressed to make Andrew a global trade envoy, doing something useful for the UK while allowing him to travel widely without the ‘Air miles Andy’ jibe dominating headlines.

The documents on the appointment released last week tell us two key things: first that this was a personal request by Her Majesty, and second that the government was happy to go it along with it without too much scrutiny. In 2001 globalization was spiraling, and traditional western economies saw the challenge of emerging competitors. A burgeoning China was being set for admission to the World Trade Organisation. Having a key royal as envoy on trade missions looked like an asset.

Phrases like the then Queen being “very keen” for her son to take a role were in essence an instruction to the government, while couched in constitutional distance. At the same time, the arch notes from officials stating that Andrew should “not be burdened with the regularity of meetings” sent a signal back that Whitehall understood Andrew was a symbolic salesman, who had neither the interest nor diligence to do stuff as basic as attending planning meetings about his role. Both ends of the British Establishment, Palace and civil service, were conspiring in giving Mountbatten-Windsor a role in life – although his weaknesses were in plain sight.

What followed was a deepening of the Prince’s entitlement. A variety of ambassadors and other support staff have described a rude, ungracious figure, who wanted the trappings of royal visits but also saw the travel as an opportunity for enhancing his dating life and travelling in luxury at the tax-payer’s expense. Indeed, a lot of this was about sorting the problem of how to pay for the jet-set lifestyle Andrew demanded.

We are also learning that, when it came to turning a blind eye to worrying signals, the late Queen could be implacable. She enjoyed her second son’s company. And most likely saw the risk of a worrying repeat of the problems of primogeniture, in which the future of the institution rests on the eldest child and their heirs. Everyone else is a “spare part” – as Andrew once mordantly described himself to a friend. The effects of this birth order had turned the life of her beloved younger sister Margaret into a spoilt quest for pleasure and ultimately a decline into over-indulgence and ill-health, which gives us some idea of why the Queen wanted to sort out a role for another child in the royal running order.

The Queen has been criticised for putting her role of unwavering public duty before her family – the formality of dealings and access meant that even her grown-up children had to request appointments for private time with her and wait for approval from her staff. But she was also a problem solver by decades of experience – and pragmatic about her Andrew’s intellectual limitations and his private life (it was pretty hard to shock Queen Elizabeth). It now also looks, however, like an indulgence of whim and selfishness that she either could not correct or had given up on.

Even the request that he visit mainly “sophisticated countries” was code for avoiding the sort of duty visits the Queen and Charles as Prince of Wales had to take in their stride to keep the balance of Commonwealth duties and British foreign policy focus rolling along.

Putting aside the benefit of hindsight, the problem with Queen Elizabeth’s judgement was only partly the envoy role. The Palace refused to take seriously enough stories of Andrew’s deepening connections with the Epstein-Maxwell nexus, now on gory display in the Epstein files. They could hardly say this was unknown – the royal household could read Private Eye magazine as well as anyone else. We now know that this was a terrible error.

The Queen’s son would need to be bailed out to the tune of several millions from a civil suit against him by the late Virginia Giuffre, following accusations that she was forced into sex with him aged 17 (Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor denies all charges of wrongdoing in this and other cases of alleged trafficking). It is easy to think the Queen had at least enough grounds for suspicion about Andrew’s networks that the Palace could have acted sooner.

It is a story that clouds so many uplifting memories of a beloved Queen, and of a woman whose consistent dignity embodied the monarchy’s role as a shock absorber in society, as well as purveyor of Britain in all its confident pomp and circumstance. Andrew’s moral failings have trashed the legacy of his greatest protector.

Now, King Charles has done what could not happen while his mother was alive – cut off an unrepentant brother and promised “full co-operation” into Mountbatten-Windsor’s conduct. It is alas, too late to save the family from serious damage imposed by one of its own. A monarch and mother who wanted to protect a weak link in the royal chain ended up facilitating the biggest risk to the royal family’s stature since the abdication of her uncle Edward VIII.

Anne McElvoy is co-host of Politics at Sam and Anne’s and executive editor at POLITICO

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