Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was long known as Queen Elizabeth's favorite child, and even after his association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein came to the light, the late Queen was hesitant to demote her son in the Royal Family. In royal author and journalist Robert Jobson's new book, The Windsor Legacy, he detailed Queen Elizabeth's reaction when the former Duke of York was accused of sexual assault.
Writing that "public outrage exploded" following the late Virginia Giuffre's accusations against Andrew and his resulting 2019 Newsnight interview, Jobson penned that it was King Charles (then Prince Charles) who made "urgent" calls to his mother and "insisted that Andrew had to be cut adrift." Queen Elizabeth, for her part, "acted swiftly to protect the monarchy," as Jobson wrote, but found breaking the news to Andrew to be "painful."
