Is Prince Andrew really that sleazy?

By the standards of the House of Hanover, from whom he stems, his vulgarities and follies seem mild

Prince Andrew
Prince Andrew Credit: Photo: REX

For those of us who normally listen to Radio 4 with half an ear, it was confusing. Just hours after its sublime day-long dramatisation of War and Peace on New Year’s Day, it started to speak of Prince Andrew’s troubles. Prince Andrew is perhaps the most attractive male character in Tolstoy’s great novel – a brave soldier who lay on the field of Austerlitz, wounded, staring at the sky, contemplating the mystery of things. Suddenly, it seemed, by some surreal leap, Prince Andrew had become a character in the news bulletins, and was behaving wildly out of character. Our man, who had once stood on a ferry-boat with Pierre wondering if there is life after death, would surely not have been spending his holidays in Thailand with his billionaire friend Jeffrey Epstein…

Then we blinked, and realised that the purity of the New Year’s Day broadcast was over. Great art had been hooted off the stage by slapstick. Tolstoy’s real people had been replaced by two-dimensional naughty seaside postcard characters: the Duchess Fergiana (“vulgar, vulgar, vulgar!” said Lord Charteris), and her unfortunate daughters. Lawyers from across the Herring Pond told us of their mysterious clients – all called Jane Doe, apparently. Miss Roberts, one of the Jane Does, then cropped up to give new meaning to the troubling word “slave”. She claimed she had been given £10,000 – more, in some versions of the tale – to visit our Prince, in London, New York and on some Isle of Sleaze. Strenuous denials from the Palace, which seemed almost the most demeaning thing of all. Whatever happened to the dignified silence?

Dear, oh dear, oh dear. And everything had been going so swimmingly well for the monarchy. Everyone adored Kate Middleton. Prince George was the most popular toddler in the world. The Queen’s long and admirable reign, it appeared, had been going to enter a golden twilight, in which most of the British public, surveying the republican alternatives (M. Hollande clutching precariously to the back of his mistress’s motor-scooter; horrible bodybuilder Putin... ), believed they would prefer to stick to the monarchy.

Whatever Prince Andrew did or did not do with Miss Roberts, he certainly seems, in the course of his life, to have befriended some truly unlovely people. The newspapers have been full, for days, of photographs of his solid body, often clad in nothing but swimming drawers, lolling in the kind of sun-soaked holiday settings from which discerning travellers would run a mile. Ghislaine Maxwell, for it is she, seems to be present in some of the photographs in such luxury hell-holes as the Mar-a-Lago Club, Palm Beach, or the absurdly named resort of Phuket.

For those of us who enjoy the scourings of the gutter press, and who are unkind enough to laugh at other people’s misfortunes, it was a glorious week. But the serious commentators among us have allowed ourselves worrying reflections. A month ago, the monarchy was secure, saved by the family virtues of the Middletons and by those infallible feet of Her Majesty that have never been put wrong. All of a sudden, the monarchy is once more where pundits like it – under threat.

It must be said that, so far, the Duke of York has not done anything that could threaten the constitutional monarchy. He may be somewhat foolish in enjoying mixing with dubious company. But, by the standards of the House of Hanover, from whom he stems, his vulgarities and follies seem mild.

People used to criticise Sir John Conroy and the Duchess of Kent during the 1820s for being too protective of the young princess in their care – the future Queen Victoria. Why, the Duchess did not even allow her to go up and down the stairs by herself. But there was good reason for that. If little Victoria had tripped on the stairs and broken her neck, then her uncle Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, would have become the King. Duel-scarred Ernest, who attended the House of Lords night after night and made anti-Catholic, anti-Liberal speeches of a kind that embarrassed all but the diehard, was widely believed to have murdered his valet and fathered a child by his sister, Princess Sophie. The thought of him succeeding his fat sailor brother William IV (who had 10 illegitimate children) made even convinced monarchists see the virtue in republicanism.

The thought of Queen Victoria’s obese, dissolute uncles in swimming drawers is a truly appalling one. A fleshy nightmare that the brush of Rubens could alone reproduce. There can be no doubt, however, that any one of them, had they been alive today, would have warmly embraced the chance to befriend Mr Epstein and Ms Maxwell. They would have loved the kind of holidays that evidently please the present Duke of York. If you think Prince Andrew is sleazy, just remember those men, and realise that, in a sleaze competition, they could all have beaten him into a gold-fringed cocked hat.

The cynical Charles Cavendish Fulke Greville (to my mind, the best diarist in the English language) kept a beady eye on all the doings of the great world from 1818 to 1860. After the hated Duke of Cumberland became King of Hanover, he disappeared from British consciousness for a number of years. But in 1843, he came back to London. This figure, who was vilified and hated by almost everyone while in England, was, said Greville, “feasted, invited, and visited by all manner of men. Everybody seems to think it necessary to treat him with dinners and balls, and he has become the lion of the season with this foolish, inconsistent world”.

I confidently predict that, in 10 years, Prince Andrew will enjoy a similar revival, and that alleged indiscretions with young Americans – today deemed so heinous as to threaten the very existence of kingship – will one day be overlooked. His distinguished youthful service as a helicopter pilot will be recalled as we all celebrate the loveable old rogue. Photographs of the paunchy Duke on yachts with unknown young Jane Does will be replaced by loveable snaps of him on the golf course, or moving pictures of his medal-bestrewn chest as he stands in naval uniform taking the salute.

Meanwhile, the monarchy goes on. Perhaps, as well as being grateful to Prince Andrew for providing us all with the cheap thrill of moral indignation, we should thank him for reminding us why we value the monarchy. It has almost nothing to do with personality. The reason the Queen is such a successful monarch is that she keeps herself to herself. There could not be a cult of personality in her case because none of us have the smallest sense of what that personality is.

We revere her as a good, evidently dutiful woman, but we do not hero-worship her as we would a favourite sports or film star. She is as far as it is possible to be from the idolised Leader. But when she had been our constitutional monarch for 60 years, the streets of London were flooded with a million people.

Dismayed republicans tried to persuade themselves that these were all tourists… but they were not. They were the British people. That is, they were the old indigenous population, and they were also the recent immigrants. It is the monarchy, not the party political system, that unites this country, and this has become more true since the increase in immigration, more true since the threat to the Union posed by Scottish nationalism, more true since the parties became indistinguishable – perhaps, who knows, more true, even, since the latest little wave of scandals.

Most British people stopped being Christian years ago. No doubt that saddens our Queen who is a committed Christian. Actual religion, however – going to church, believing – is now very definitely a minority occupation. But human beings are naturally religious, and one of the key substitute religions to which the secularised British subscribe is monarchism. They do not believe the Queen is infallible.

There remains, however, a palpable and religious public mood at such events as the laying of wreaths at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, or the funeral of the Queen Mother, or the wedding of Prince William. Such feelings would not arise if we were watching President Cherie Booth or President Stephen Fry laying a wreath, much as those individuals have their fan base. Something slightly weird, but wholly benign, is going on here. There is a symbiosis between the people and the monarch, and it is real. It surfaces again and again. The Queen appears to have a gentle, intuitive sense of it, which is why the monarchical system works so well here, most of the time, whether she is putting on her glad rags and opening Parliament, or patiently visiting yet another hospital, factory or school.

Yet there is a danger in all this – a danger of legitimate monarchism being soppy, even idolatrous. Toddler George is just a little boy. Leave him alone until he is on the point of inheriting the throne. Do not drool over him.

Maybe the clumsy behaviour of his great-uncle Prince Andrew is, in this sense, a good thing for the monarchy. Those of us who support the monarchy as a system need to be reminded that it is not a glorified form of hero-worship. Quite the opposite. Maybe Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein are angels in disguise, reminding us of the fallible humanity of princes. It is a bit like the man who was paid to whisper in the ear of the Caesars that they were human, too human.

I should say, however, that such is the public desire for this institution to work that even in this catastrophic situation, we’ll all muddle through, in what Greville so wisely calls “this foolish inconsistent world”. The wiseacres, Greville included, found William IV an embarrassment, but actually, that fat old naval officer turned into a popular king.

Prince Andrew protests his complete innocence in the face of all the accusations from America, and we must, until evidence to the contrary appears, accept his word. His little peccadilloes, whatever they turn out to have been, are not big enough to destroy the need of the great British public – and of a trillion worldwide public’s emotional need – for the monarchy here to continue.

Obviously, though, it would help when invited to stay on a sleazy yacht by a dubious billionaire, to head off for the rain-soaked glens of Balmoral instead.