Give Andrew a break

The naughty chap formerly known as Prince Andrew of York has been disgraced, divested of all his titles and deported to Norfolk. Henceforth, he’ll be known as the commoner Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, a surname of rather recent vintage by royal standards.

It goes back to the First World War wreaking havoc on German-sounding names. Many of them had to become Anglicised under the pressure of anti-Hun sentiments.

Even the poor German shepherd had to become an Alsatian in Britain, although his canine kin stubbornly kept their original name in the US. But that name change isn’t as momentous as some others.

For it wasn’t just the lowly dog but also our rather Germanic royal family that had to become properly naturalised. King George V took one look at his own royal House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and decided it simply wouldn’t do.

“Henceforth,” he declared, “our House and Family shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor.” That done, there remained the small matter of another branch of the family, specifically the king’s second cousin, Lord Louis Battenberg.

He too had to Anglicise his name and, having undoubtedly considered and rejected such obvious possibilities as ‘Smith’ or ‘Jackson’, Louis settled on an easy option. He transposed the two halves of his surname, translated the German ‘berg’ as ‘mount’ and came up with ‘Mountbatten’.

The name had a nice ring to it, so nice in fact that, according to some unverified reports, it inspired a Jewish cobbler in Brooklyn to change his name to ‘Mountginz’. But I wouldn’t give much credence to that story.

Anyway, it has been known for a while that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he now is, is a bad boy who tends to think with the part of his body not known for housing reason. Having started by outlining some historical background, I might as well continue in that vein and point out that such libidinousness has a fine tradition in his family.

One report says that, on a visit to Thailand, Andrew once had forty prostitutes delivered to his hotel in just four days. This outdoes the relatively restrained exploits of his father, which gave rise to much gossip but no reliable reports of Gargantuan amorous voracity.

In fact, heredity junkies have to go back to Andrew’s great-great-grandfather, Edward VII, to dig up the family roots of such rapaciousness.

When he was still Albert the Prince of Wales, the future king already showed a great lust for life. He reportedly had five 10-course meals a day, each course accompanied by a few glasses of appropriate French wines. That gave ‘Dirty Bertie’ a 48-inch waist at the time of his 1902 coronation, which was only a point of departure. Yet that’s not what gave him his nickname.

For wines weren’t the only French product Bertie had a huge appetite for. He loved France and always spent much time there, having numerous affairs with a cross-section of Gallic womanhood, from aristocratic ladies to actresses to Folies Bergère dancers.

But above all, he was a valued patron of Parisian bordellos, including the most exclusive of them, Le Chabanais near the Louvre. Bertie brought to such pursuits not only his vigour in love-making but also his creativity in cabinet-making, a rare talent among aristocrats.

Following his precise specifications, furniture manufacturer Soubier designed a ‘love chair’ (siège d’amour) enabling the corpulent king to have sex with two women simultaneously, without crushing either of them with his bulk. For decorum’s sake, I’ll spare you the technicalities, but I doubt that even such innovations enabled Bertie to match Andrew’s rumoured record of forty in four days.

Andrew’s shenanigans embarrassed his brother on numerous occasions, as they did their parents earlier. Moreover, they brought the monarchy in disrepute, providing grist for the republican mill. That’s why I think justice has been done: Andrew deserves everything he has got.

Yet justice needs to be leavened with mercy, and I don’t believe Andrew deserves more than he has already got. Moreover, comparing his misdeeds to those of his great-great-grandfather, I wonder how much worse they are.

Andrew did keep objectionable company by being friends with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, both undoubtedly sleazebags. But, for all the Gallic glitter of Le Chabanais and other Parisian bordellos, I doubt that everyone Bertie rubbed shoulders with there was an upstanding citoyen or citoyenne.

Andrew is supposed to have had sex with Virginia Giuffre, 17 at the time, who was one of the girls Epstein kept on tap for his guests’ delectation. Even if true, which it probably is, 17 isn’t 12 – these days, with sex education on most curricula, it’s more like the new 30.

Epstein was guilty of trafficking young Virginia to Andrew, but the latter’s guilt is less clear-cut. As that notorious photograph shows, the girl wasn’t unduly distressed, and she was there of her own accord.

Virginia lived through her ordeal, got married, had three children, received a hefty settlement from Andrew when the scandal broke out and eventually killed herself at 41, unable to get away from her abusive husband.

Andrew might have violated the letter of the law, but anyone in his place would have assumed that the girl was of age. Anyway, are we sure all the young ladies Bertie entertained in his love chair were legally old enough for such games?

Edward VII did combine business with pleasure. His diplomatic efforts, boosted by his popularity in France, made the Entente Cordiale possible. The formal agreement was signed in 1904, and a little part of me wonders whether it played a significant role in drawing Britain into the great war ten years later.

Still, Edward didn’t have our benefit of hindsight and he served his country as best he could. But then so did Andrew, who served with distinction as helicopter pilot aboard the HMS Invincible during the Falklands War. Part of his duties was acting as a decoy to draw fire away from other ships during an attack, which took suicidal courage. 

So a cad, yes. An embarrassment to the royal family, no doubt. Entitled, definitely, but then he was a royal prince, and wouldn’t you feel a wee bit entitled in his place? So by all means, take his titles away, banish him to Sandringham – but then leave him alone. He has paid for his transgressions.

Yet all sorts of sanctimonious moralisers who are themselves without sin are baying for Andrew’s blood, with the family of the late Virginia Giuffre demanding that he be extradited to the US, arrested and tried for his ‘crimes’. Many British voices echo such bloodthirsty urges, but then some of those same people would happily have the whole royal family drawn and quartered.

I wonder if I’m the only one who feels pity for Andrew. Like many wartime soldiers, he had difficulty adjusting to civilian life, and he did behave abominably on numerous occasions (his marriage to a totally unsuitable woman was one such). He doesn’t deserve to remain part of the functioning royal family. But he does deserve to be left in peace.