LONDON (AP).—Maintaining prestige, but not power, the British monarchy is finally in tune with public sentiment.
That has been evident with the disgrace of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, who was stripped of his title as prince and thrown out of his spacious residence by order of his brother, King Charles III, a banishment that has left the discredited royal increasingly exposed to scrutiny in both the United Kingdom and the United States for his friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
After years of scandals involving Andrew, Charles undoubtedly took the biggest step of his reign by seeking to insulate the monarchy from any further controversy related to Andrew and his connections to Epstein, who took his own life in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking, more than a decade after he was first convicted on such charges.
This is not the first time that the British monarchy – the House of Windsor – has been in crisis in the last century and that the future of the institution has been threatened.
World War I
George Gross, an expert on the monarchy at King’s College London, said the most recent precedent for what has happened to Andrew is the Title Deprivation Act of 1917, which “caused a number of royals, loosely affiliated dukes and members of the nobility to lose titles if they had allied with Germany in the First World War.”
Europe’s royal families are intertwined, and Britain’s is largely German, especially after Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, with whom she had nine children.
When Britain and Germany went to war in 1914, some members of the extended British royal family found themselves on opposite sides.
King George V of Great Britain changed the family name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor in 1917 and initiated legislation to remove the titles of princes and lords “who have, during the present war, carried arms against Her Majesty or her Allies, or who have adhered to Her Majesty’s enemies.”
One target was Prince Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, who was a Royalist of the United Kingdom and also Prince of Hanover. He was stripped of his title for being an enemy of Great Britain under the 1917 Act, which was enacted in 1919 after the war ended.
According to the House of Commons Library, “this was the first and only time a title has been removed in this way.”
The abdication
The relationship between Edward, Prince of Wales, and American socialite Wallis Simpson was a headache that turned into a constitutional crisis. Simpson had been divorced twice and Edward, the heir to the throne, was intended to be the ceremonial head of the Anglican Church, which did not allow divorced people to remarry in the church.
The prince became King Edward VIII when his father, King George V, died in early 1936. He went on to say that he wanted to marry Simpson, despite opposition from the British government.
Forced to choose between duty and passion, he renounced the throne in December 1936, announcing in a radio broadcast: “I have found it impossible… to fulfill my duties as king as I wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.”
The news came as a surprise to many in Britain, although not further afield. British newspapers had not reported on the relationship, and American magazines had offensive articles edited before going on sale.
The abdication set the monarchy on a new course. Edward’s younger brother assumed the throne as King George VI. He was succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth II, and after reigning 70 years, her son, King Charles III, took over. Everyone doubled down that the monarch’s primary attribute should be a sense of duty, something that, in the popular imagination, Edward lacked.
Edward and Wallis, now the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and who some suspected were Nazi sympathizers, were sent to the Bahamas, where he served as governor. After the war, they largely stayed away from Britain, living a life of nomadic luxury.
Diana’s death
The death of Princess Diana – Charles’ ex-wife – in a car accident in Paris in 1997 at the age of 36 shocked the world and left her family in mourning, including her sons William and Harry, then aged 15 and 12, respectively.
The strength of public sentiment took the royal family by surprise. Piles of flower arrangements piled up outside the gates of Buckingham Palace and Diana’s residence at Kensington Palace to mourn a princess who was ostracized by the royal family after divorcing Charles in 1992.
The queen was in Balmoral, Scotland, on summer holidays with her husband, Prince Philip, her son Charles and grandsons William and Harry. The family kept their grief private and stuck to routine, taking the ashen-faced boys to church on Sunday morning, and the queen did not issue a statement for several days.
The then Prime Minister Tony Blair advised the Queen to make a public display of grief. He perfectly captured the public mood with his own tribute calling Diana “the people’s princess.”
After newspaper headlines urging “Talk to Us, Madam” and “Show Us You Care,” the Queen gave a live televised speech to the nation on the eve of Diana’s funeral.
“What I tell you now, as your queen and as your grandmother, I say from my heart,” the queen said, acknowledging the country’s pain, praising Diana and promising to cherish her memory.
The younger prince
Until the Epstein scandal resurfaced last year, Andrés tried to regain the family’s sympathy. He may have indirectly benefited from the problem with Prince Henry, who was the source of most of the drama at the time outside of the family’s medical problems.
Harry became estranged from his father and older brother Prince William, heir to the throne, when he and his wife Meghan Markle stepped down from royal duties and moved to California in 2020. The couple publicly aired their grievances about the royal family in an interview with Oprah Winfrey and a Netflix series. Harry, Duke of Sussex, fueled tensions by revealing personal conversations in his memoir, “Spare.”
Harry also broke with royal protocol by turning to the courts to resolve legal issues. He became the first high-profile royal to testify in court in more than a century in his successful phone hacking lawsuit against the Daily Mirror.
A failed legal effort to have him restored to police protection that was withdrawn when he left royal duties was seen as an attack on his father’s government. When the courts ultimately rejected the lawsuit, an opportunity presented itself for father and son to be reunited. The two shared a cup of tea at Carlos’s London residence, Clarence House, in September. It was their first meeting in more than a year. It lasted less than an hour.