Can King Charles Contain the Andrew Disaster?

0:00 Ah Calorougus Shark Media. Hello and welcome to Palace Intrigue Game. Your host Mark Francis for the BBC. Johnny Diamond writes, no one would envy the position of the King right now, his supporter's point to the actions he has already taken, stripping titles and home from his brother, as well as promising cooperation with any inquiries. Some believe the arrest will give the royal family and palace some breathing space, and that the treatment of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor as just another suspect will lessen the damage done. There can be little doubt of the struggle the King has had balancing family loyalty and his duty to the crown. As Andrew withdrew from public life, so the palace withdrew from representing him.

0:46 But the distraction so important to the palace is entirely lost on most people. The Palace, the royal family, the monarchy all scene as one. Andrew may not have been on Buckingham Palace balcony for a while, but for more than six decades he was part of what his father, Prince Philip used to call the family business. The idea this is or was a private matter is for the birds. One story lost in the mix was how King charles new documentary Finding Harmony a king's vision, was quickly overshadowed by renewed attention on Andrew. According to Pallace sources, the King had hoped the documentary would focus public attention on what he sees as his long term environmental legacy. Instead, headlines shifted almost immediately to fresh images and documents connected to Andrew and Epstein. A Palace source said, there is real anger behind the scenes, and if we are being candid, some of it is rooted in pride. The King invested enormous personal energy into this documentary. It was not just another engagement or ceremonial duty. He regards it as a distillation of everything he has stood for over decades, a kind of mission statement for his reign. Charles believed the release would focus public attention on his environmental legacy, the years of care painting that were once mocked and now widely accepted. Instead, the headlines pivoted almost immediately to Andrew and the latest Epstein revelations. From the King's perspective, what should have been a moment of gravitas and reflection was eclipsed.

2:13 Another source said Charles, he's a stark contrast between his life's work and Andrew's recurring controversies. He views himself as focused on stewardship, legacy, and long term Andrew, in his view, remains trapped in reputational crises of his own making. In his sub stack Royal Insighted, Deep Crown Rights. What should alarm us most is the characterization of full cooperation with law enforcement as some sort of hardened stance, a tipping point reached only because Andrew's scandal hijacked a film premiere, if it requires a documentary being overshadowed to prompt basic institutional responsibility. If this represents the outer limit of royal decisiveness, then we are not witnessing firm leadership. We are witnessing a man fundamentally unsuited to the ruthlessness the monarchy occasionally demands for its own survival. For Boomberg, Andrew, Hastings writes and Epstein's show trial for Andrew is a bad idea.

3:08 According to Hastings, there is a better than even money chance that Andrew mount Batten Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, Duke of York Knight of the Garta, will soon be obliged to fly to Washington and testify before a Congressional committee about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. An appearance on Capitol Hill will merely be show business unless there is a clear aim to establish criminality to continue pruriently pouring over disclosures of more women, more free trips, more money for his ex wife is for whose benefit. The story of Windsor and Epstein is unusual among squalid royal stories because it has been documented and photographed, but regal families have for centuries exploited the fact that rich people foolish enough to value association with crowns offer prince's absurdly generous prizes financial sexual limits for their company. Spain's royals have been repeatedly shamed by exposure of their participation in dirty deals, and the Scandinavians have their share of embarrassments. Kings and princes seem never to have as much money or in some cases, as much sex, as they think themselves entitled to, and even in an age when few crowned heads outside of the Gulf States actually rule anything, sugar daddies are willing to indulge them, though further exposure of Windsor's activities will diminish the eagerness of some future royals to embrace sleeves as a career, if they are granted the opportunity.

4:33 Because this is what ignorantly entitled people do. What we middle class types label is decadence. They call fun. In the Express, Chris Richess writes, when Anne Berlin was executed by a sword on May nineteenth, fifteen thirty six, her French executioner wore soft shoes to muffle his movements and distracted her with a sudden noise, so she turned her head, exposing her neck for his swift strike. Although she had said her prayers, she was not expecting to be killed at just that moment, so the blow stopped minutes of agonized waiting. Similarly, King Charles and Prince William swiftly executed their mission to oust Andrew from royal lodge with a deaft but unexpected strike. Maybe that was too an act of mercy. More palats in just a moment, Andrew should be removed from the line of succession and stripped of his remaining constitutional roles. According to a Labour MP Rachel Maskell, MP for York Central, told the PBC that the former Duke of York's position in the order of succession, where he is currently eighth, should be reconsidered. She also called for his role as a Counselor of State to be revoked.

5:46 Councilors of State can undertake certain official duties on behalf of the monarch in his absence. Maskell said, time and time again we have seen that Andrew has been conservative with the truth, adding that all of these titles and positions need to be addressed. We are just left with Andrew the citizen, and a citizen that is fully accountable royal inside a deep ground, adds the Counselor of state arrangement is one of those constitutional curiosities that functions perfectly well in the background, right up until the moment it doesn't, at which point you are no longer dealing with a curiosity, but a full blown crisis. Under ordinary circumstances. The question of who might temporarily sign off on official documents in the king's absence is administrative housekeeping, but the mathematics here are rather uncomfortable should the realm ever find itself in circumstances grave enough to require a region, and we are speaking of scenario as one genuinely hopes never materialize. The current line of succession places us in the extraordinary position of potentially looking to either the Duke of Sussex or the former Duke of York for constitutional cover. One is conducting a one man grievance tour from a California media compound, and the other is as the MP for York Central, so diplomatically put it, a man who has been rather concerservative with the truth the Institution deserves better contingency planning than that. Miss Maskell is not wrong in her instincts, even if Parliament has thus far declined to provide the mechanism.

7:11 The Council of State roster was quietly expanded in twenty twenty two to add the Princess Royal and the Earl of Wessex now Edinburgh, precisely because sensible people in and around the Palace understood that the existing arrangement was untenable. That was institutional pragmatism doing quietly what the Parliament would not do loudly, removing Andrew from the succession entirely as a heavier constitutional lift. But the case for stripping his councilor of State status is frankly straightforward. These are not ceremonial baubles. They are instruments of the Crown, and the Crown's credibility is not well served by association with a man whose conduct remains to borrow. The charitable phrasing unresolved. The Palace has managed Andrew through managed distance. What is now required is managed removal. In the Daily Mail, A. N.

7:58 Wilson writes the monarchy engraved jeopardy. The revelations about Andrew, Fergie and Epstein are among the most devastating to happen to the royal family, and it's about to get worse. We will probably felt we had reached rock bottom looking at that photograph of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor on all fours hovering over some unfortunate young person on the floor. Whether it is in Glene Maxwell's house in London, or in Jeffrey Epstein's New York home, or even in Buckingham Palace to which the former Prince invited the unsaved repair, it does not really matter wherever it took place. The picture contained in the latest tranch of Epstein files has brought us to a new low, and that famous phrase of Victorian journalist Walter Bagerhart and the British monarchy, we must not let daylight in upon the magic. We have never sounded more relevant or ominous. For this is not merely daylight.

8:46 It is the blind and glaring arc light of publicity, the light of FBI investigators, accompanied by the demand of the US Congress for answers from our royal family. This is the light of attention, such as the royals would never have dreamed in their worst nightmares. Understandably enough, there are renewed calls for King Charles the Third to do something. But what can he do? He has already stripped his brother of all his titles, booted him out of his grace and favor, mansion, Royal Lodge and Windsor, and done more or less everything humanly possible to distance himself and the rest of his family and the whole royal brand from the taint of Andrew Fergie, the pedophile Epstein and his Madame Maxwell. There is even talk of excluding Andrew from the line of succession. I am no constitutional expert, but I do not actually see how this could be done, and in any case, it would surely just be a gesture of politics, since unless they were the most monumental calamity in which the Prince of Wales and or his family were wiped out, there is no likelihood of Andrew getting anywhere near becoming the king. The revelations about Andrew, Fergie and Epstein are among the most devastating to happen, not just to the royal family but the monarchy itself.

9:51 I believe it could be in grave jeopardy as a result. Let us look at the implications of this. Our monarchy is a fact of our constitution, but if you try to examine quite what it is and has been over the centuries, you come to realize it is something much more than an anachronistic byproduct of history or political convenience. We cherished the illusion that our royal family were different, that our king or Queen was a special person, someone we could look up to. We deliberately drew a veil over their faults. We journalists never reported their illnesses in any detail. Their love lives were simply not mentioned throughout the long marriage of Queen Elizabeth Second and Prince Philip, although gossips might occasionally murmur that the Duke was something of a playboy with an eye for the ladies. Barely a breath of scandal ever got into print. The outpouring of grief for Queen Elizabeth the Second was in part the morning of a nation who felt they could look to her as a figure of purity and decency, an emblem of what we want the monarchy to be. The end of Charles's marriage to Diana did great damage to the idea of royalty as magic. It has taken decades for Charles and Camilla to repair it. Now they are older and more frail. The solidity of their relationship has made them very popular in the nation as a whole, and only the most churlish would deny them their happiness together.

11:09 But Fergie and Andrew's greedy, coarse way of life, mercilessly exposed by the Epstein scandal, has done untold damage once again, and this time it could be mortal. Not because of any one particular example of their greed or corruption, but because the whole story reveals their sense of entitlement. King Charles, despite having cancer, is doing his utmost to keep the show on the road. The seriousness with which he prepared for his coronation was a sign of how much he wants us all to believe in the magic still, for he knows that the monarchy's survival depends on it. And there you have it. If you like to email us or addresses the Palace Intrigue at gmail dot com. Please followus on Spotify, Apple, Facebook, Instagram. Were all over social media.

11:52 I'm Mark Francis my thanks to John mcdermoth. This is Palace Intriguan. Good terms.