The sight of Prince Andrew (one title he still has left) escorting his mum, the Queen, to her seat in Westminster Abbey this morning at the memorial service for the Duke of Edinburgh was enough to send social media watchers into conniptions.
Goodness, he was actually grasping her elbow to steady her! And taking his seat next to his younger brother, Prince Edward, admittedly distanced from Charles and William by the breadth of an aisle. What was he doing there? Why was he invited? How dare he show his face, just a few weeks after paying millions of his mother’s money to Virginia Giuffre to settle the looming legal action in New York. Isn’t he a pariah, despite denying any culpability in the case? How could it be allowed? Had he no shame? (The answer is probably not, though you can’t deny that a degree of courage was needed to attend, knowing the world’s media would be watching.)
Perhaps his mother gave him courage. Or perhaps it was insouciance. The answer is that his appearance at the service to honour his ancient father, who died last April a few weeks short of his 100th birthday, was inevitable.
Black sheep though he is (is ram the better word?) he’s part of the family. His presence does not exonerate him, nor is it likely to be a sign of incipient recovery. His public life, like his string of titles, is behind him and will not be coming back. The Queen who finally, unsentimentally, stripped him of those titles last month knows that.
In any event, the frosty looks on the faces of Charles and William – who are the real powerbrokers now – make clear that Andrew is out in the cold. If there’s one thing the royals value above loyalty, it’s survival – the tsar discovered that a hundred years ago when George V denied him and his family asylum after the Russian revolution. The rest of the family know that Andrew drags the whole show down.
There is no public future for him, but he can hardly be denied attendance at what, despite all the pomp and circumstance of the Abbey service, was a personal and family occasion. After all, Andrew did attend his father’s funeral at Windsor 11 months ago when all the rest of the family were only too well aware of the quagmire he had got himself into. Expect his next public appearance, probably, to be at his mother’s funeral, whenever that finally comes to pass.
Possibly of more concern to the royals will have been Prince Harry’s nonappearance. He stayed in California, perhaps still smarting that he does not qualify in this country for special police protection himself – one of the downsides of being an unroyal royal. He could have been at the abbey today to commemorate his grandfather, who had walked with him at his mother’s funeral, but he decided not to be. Such things will have been noticed at the palace.
Stephen Bates is an author and former religious affairs and royal correspondent of the Guardian
