LATEST UPDATES | Prince Andrew to lose 'Prince' title and longtime home

billie jean moffitt king charles ix initiates formal treat to transfer Prince Andrew's titles and honours

Embarrassment surrounding Prince Andrew grows with accuser’s memoir

Virginia Giuffre accuses Prince Andrew of being 'entitled' in posthumous book

Prince Andrew to give up royal titles, including Duke of York

Buckingham Palace said Andrew will move to a property on the private Sandringham estate in Norfolk, which will be funded by King Charles.

The palace said the move out of Royal Lodge will take place “as soon as practicable.”

Andrew’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, who had also resided at Royal Lodge until now, will have to make her own arrangements.

David Michael Lamb

Andrew has lived at Royal Lodge since 2003. The house sits on the grounds of Windsor Great Park, the vast royal estate to the south of Windsor Castle. Royal Lodge is about five kilometres south of the castle.

There’s been a house on the site since the 1660s, but the current structure dates to the 19th century and was substantially renovated in the 1930s. It’s a 30-room, three-storey structure that was the home of the Queen Mother from 1952 until she died in 2002.

When Andrew took possession of the house, he signed a 75-year lease, effectively handing him the property for the rest of his life. By this time it was badly in need of repairs. Andrew agreed at the time to spend £7.5 million (around $16.8 million in 2003) to substantially refurbish the property, and another £1 million (around $2.2 million) for the lease.

He has effectively not paid anything more for it since, except for “peppercorn rent,” which is usually a nominal fee of £1 per year.

Archive: Prince Andrew PR Backlash

Look back as Prince Andrew blasted for what many view as a disastrous interview with the BBC, in which he spoke about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and denied any wrongdoing.

The trail of scandal and controversy surrounding Andrew goes back more than a decade.

When the allegations that Andrew had sex with Giuffre resurfaced, the palace vigorously denied them.

But as the allegations — which Andrew has continued to deny — resurfaced over time, his profile and public perception shifted.

After a disastrous BBC interview in 2019 regarding his friendship with Epstein, Andrew’s reputation sank like a stone and he stepped back from official royal duties. He also agreed to settle the lawsuit in which he was accused of sexually abusing Giuffre.

In addition, controversy has followed him in connection with his position as a trade envoy for the U.K. Government — when he was labelled “Air Miles Andy” given his penchant for travel at public expense — and with more recent reports of a close friendship he had with an alleged Chinese spy.

It’s hard to find a historical example to rival what we are seeing happen with Andrew, his titles and his relationship with the rest of the Royal Family.

Prescott told me just now he thinks “this is pretty much unprecedented.”

The only sort of parallel he sees is the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936.

Justin Vovk, a royal historian and member of the advisory board of the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada, also told me just now that there really isn’t precedent for this.

“The closest example was the Titles Deprivation Act of 1917, which specifically dealt with peers who had been fighting against Britain during World War I. There really is no roadmap for excommunicating a member of the Royal Family in this way,” Vovk said.

As much as today’s announcement comes as a surprise — the Daily Mail has, for example, labelled it a “bombshell” — there was also a sense of inevitability that something had to give in the circumstances surrounding Andrew.

As I was preparing this week for tomorrow’s edition of the newsletter and chatting with some of my regular sources, there was a lot of focus on how the palace and King Charles have been handling the controversy that grew out of Andrew’s association with Epstein.

Craig Prescott, a constitutional expert and lecturer in law at Royal Holloway, University of London, described the situation as “the first genuine royal crisis” of King Charles’s reign.

“This will be one of those moments that is sort of pointed out as a particular issue for the monarchy that it struggled to deal with,” he said.

Embarrassment surrounding Prince Andrew grows with accuser’s memoir

There are calls in the U.K. For the royals to further distance themselves from Prince Andrew after the publication of the late Virginia Giuffre’s memoir, which details her allegations against Andrew and his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. The prince continues to deny the accusations.

Today’s move from Buckingham Palace comes a little over a week after the release of a bombshell memoir by the late Virginia Giuffre, who for years was one of the most outspoken accusers of Andrew and Epstein.

Giuffre died by suicide this spring and Nobody's Girl was published posthumously last Tuesday.

In the book, Giuffre recounts how she first met Andrew in March 2001 when she was 17, and alleges she was forced to have sex with him on three separate occasions, Reuters reports.

Some of the details of these allegations were part of a lawsuit Giuffre filed in New York in 2021, which Andrew agreed to settle in 2022 by making a substantial donation to Giuffre’s charity and declaring he never meant to malign her character.

Buckingham Palace said Andrew’s daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, will keep their titles in line with the same 1917 law because they are “the daughters of the son of a sovereign,” with the sovereign in this case being Queen Elizabeth II.

David Michael Lamb

Under a U.K. Law dating back to 1917, the only people who can be called “prince” or “princess” are the children of a monarch, the children of the sons of a monarch and the oldest son of the Prince of Wales. That law was updated in 2012 to allow all children of the Prince of Wales to hold the title.

Under the previous law, Prince William and Princess Catherine’s daughter, Charlotte, would not have been a princess. But now she has the title, and William and Kate’s younger son, Louis, is a prince.

Andrew said he would give up using his title of Duke of York on Oct. 17 following years of criticism about his behaviour and connections to the late U.S. Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. At the time, the palace said he would still be titled as a “prince” because he is still the son of the late Queen Elizabeth II.

That was just 13 days ago.

The statement is as follows:

“His Majesty has today initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew.

“Prince Andrew will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. His lease on Royal Lodge has, to date, provided him with legal protection to continue in residence. Formal notice has now been served to surrender the lease and he will move to alternative private accommodation. “These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him.

“Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.”

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