Until Thursday morning, it had been nearly four centuries since the arrest of a senior British royal.
On his 66th birthday, the late Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite son was detained on suspicion of misconduct in public office. By evening, the former prince was released from police custody. But the ongoing investigation will unpick years of lurid allegations about Andrew’s ties to the disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein that have heaped embarrassment on his brother, King Charles III.
The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is a fresh nadir for the UK’s most powerful family, as it tries to outrun a litany of setbacks and adapt to the 21st century.
In a measure of how much the monarchy has changed, a statement from the king offering full cooperation with the law made no mention of those family ties. Only four years ago, the late queen had rushed to the former Prince Andrew’s aid, helping him to settle a sex-abuse suit linking him to Epstein — in which he denied any wrongdoing — for an undisclosed sum.
Charles, by contrast, outlined his “deepest concern” and promised Buckingham Palace’s “full and wholehearted support” for the authorities investigating his brother. “Let me state clearly,” he wrote: “The law must take its course.”
The speed of Charles’s statement to the press after his brother’s arrest marked a departure from the usual tempo of the royals’ communications. The Windsors were famously destabilized by criticism after the death of Charles’s ex-wife Princess Diana in 1997 that they’d been slow to mirror the public mood.
The royal family could’ve taken firmer action against Andrew in 2019, when the famous BBC Newsnight interview aired about Andrew’s Epstein ties, according to Ed Owens, a royal historian and author of After Elizabeth: Can the Monarchy Save Itself?
“The unexploded bomb of Andrew was left to King Charles to detonate early on in his reign,” he added. “It’s had a spectacularly damaging impact on the moral authority of the King.”
Owens criticized Charles for waiting until last year to strip Andrew of his royal titles, after the former prince had been incurring legal trouble relating to Epstein for the best part of a decade.
The police raid on Andrew’s Norfolk home caps an already-tumultuous decade for the Windsors, with the family now facing unprecedented scrutiny and uncertainty amid the fallout from the Epstein files published in January by the US Department of Justice.
Some royal observers say the arrest of the king’s brother represents as grave a challenge to the institution as the 1936 abdication crisis or the death of Princess Diana in 1997. It comes after it’s been buffeted in recent years by events such as the King’s own cancer diagnosis, the estrangement of Prince Harry and the death of the late Queen in 2022.
“The royal family will keep calm and carry on, but will be tested as never before,” said Richard Fitzwilliams, a royal commentator, speaking in a phone interview.
There is a risk that members of the family are now interviewed by police as part of the police probes into Andrew, and of further embarrassment from revelations stemming from the Epstein files or the police investigation itself.
The DOJ files contained emails indicating that Mountbatten-Windsor had advocated for Epstein on a visit with the late Queen Elizabeth II to the United Arab Emirates in 2010, and that he had shared information acquired in the course of the UK government trade envoy role he held from 2001-2011 with the disgraced financier and his associates.
Almost 200 of the documents released so far by the US Department of Justice include the phrase “HRH The Duke of York KG,” the sign-off to multiple emails received by Epstein.
They also contained pictures of the former prince on all fours kneeling over a young woman.
“It’s the lowest point for the royal family in hundreds of years,” said India McTaggart, royal correspondent at the Daily Telegraph newspaper, speaking in a phone interview. “To have Queen Elizabeth II’s beloved son sitting in police custody, on his 66th birthday no less, and the king’s younger brother. It’s unthinkable.”
Mountbatten-Windsor previously faced separate allegations regarding sexual offenses connected to his friendship with Epstein, which prompted his mother, the late queen, to strip him of his military titles and patronages in 2022. They included civil action in the US brought by Virginia Giuffre, who alleged that she was forced to have sex with the former prince as a teenager. He paid a financial settlement to end the court case, and denied wrongdoing.
Andrew’s arrest follows a series of high-profile repercussions from the Epstein files in the UK, which has also prompted the launch of a police probe into the country’s former ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson.
Jonathan Dimbleby, a historian, broadcaster and friend of King Charles III, said that Andrew’s arrest actually showed the robustness of the UK’s institutions.
“It’s demonstrated very clearly that police forces do not treat him with kid gloves merely because he is the brother of the monarch,” Dimbleby said in a phone interview. “They have treated him like any other citizen,” he said, comparing those outcomes positively by contrast with the way the Epstein files’ release had been circumscribed by executive power in the US.
King Charles had stripped Mountbatten-Windsor of his remaining titles — including “prince” — in September, following the publication of Giuffre’s memoir in which she said the former prince “believed that having sex with me was his birthright.” Despite the king’s move, his brother is still eighth in line to the throne.
Nine in ten Britons say it was “definitely” or “probably” the right decision for Charles III to remove his brother’s titles, Ipsos found in polling conducted in November, while 53% had a favorable opinion of the king.
“No one person is stronger than the institution, and the monarchy will survive,” said Dickie Arbiter, a former press spokesman for Queen Elizabeth II. “Just because you’ve got one rotten apple in the basket, it doesn’t mean the whole basket has gone rotten. You get rid of the rotten apple and the rest of them carry on.”
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