Do all “fusses” die down eventually, permitting the fussee to return to life largely as they knew it, while the public scratches its head and tries to recall precisely which scandal/multimillion dollar out-of-court settlement/Pizza Express branch it remembers them from? The question arises after the return of Prince Andrew to the royal tableau, driven last weekend by Prince William to church near Balmoral, where the Windsors are currently all gathered (with just the two notable exceptions). I must say I do think that William and Andrew missed a trick not doing carpool karaoke as they rocked up to Crathie Kirk, either to Take That’s Back for Good, or the Gary Puckett and the Union Gap’s jailbait classic Young Girl.
Even so, how fitting that this staged sighting should occur on the very weekend crowds of people descended on Scotland in the hope of spying the Loch Ness monster. You can imagine being there when the cry went up. Oh my God – there it is! Look – you can see its head and neck in the front seat, right next to Prince William! Quick, get a photo, even if “friends” will later claim it’s fake because its fingers aren’t chubby enough.
Anyhow: welcome back, Uncle Andy. Typically, royal rehab efforts move at a more glacial pace. For example, the plan to make the British public fall back in love with Prince Charles after his divorce from Princess Diana and her tragic death was slated by courtiers to take years of slow and painstaking image work. But the picture of Andrew being driven last Sunday by William and Kate, the family’s biggest current stars, comes merely one year after the Duke of York finally settled a civil claim against him by Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre was treated as a sex slave by Andrew’s friend, the late international paedo trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and long alleged that she was sexually assaulted by Andrew three times when she was 17. The duke denies everything, and his reported £12m settlement did not contain an admission of guilt.
And there he was on Sunday, next to William up front, with Kate relegated to creasing her outfit on the back seat. As indicated, these royal stagings are so often wordless scenes, so we don’t know the full story behind this picture. I suppose it’s remotely possible that when the family were having breakfast that morning, Prince William clocked the presence of Prince Andrew and hissed: “You need to spend a very long time in church indeed. In fact, you know what? I’ll drive you there myself.” Possible, but vanishingly unlikely. Andrew was, after all, pictured exiting the church at the same time as the others, instead of lingering for two or three hundred years after.
So this is not some accident, some last-minute instance of Andrew calling shotgun, or of the Waleses suddenly sighing: “OK, fine, jump in the front and we’ll give you a lift.” Please remember that we are dealing with a family widely held to telegraph fantastically complex and significant messages merely by their choice of brooch or jacket colour, which the public is duly invited to parse for meaning. So sticking a disgraced dimwit in the front seat of your car is not just some random thing that happens of a Sunday morning. This is a planned and choreographed moment, with William as the designated driver.
Even so, doing Andrew’s reintegration at Balmoral does feel particularly on the nose. Attendance here connotes the most particular closeness to the royal family’s wellspring of ineffable majesty and authority – which is perhaps why Epstein himself jumped at an invitation to Balmoral back in 1999, when Andrew had him and Ghislaine Maxwell come and visit the castle. This is the version of staying somewhere at Her Majesty’s pleasure that doesn’t involve sewage in your cell or being allowed to take your own life because it would be better all round for your Famous Men WhatsApp group. (And yes, I do know that Jeffrey and Ghislaine were in New York jails so not technically Her Maj’s guests, but you get the point.)
There were probably 500 things Epstein would have objectively preferred doing than yomping round Balmoral, even if 499 of them were illegal. But the frisson of tightness with the royal family was worth journeying to the deck of the famously spartan log cabin on the estate, and posing with Maxwell on the same bench on which the late Queen Elizabeth II was frequently pictured (even if she wasn’t in residence at the castle at the time). Epstein kept the photo of him and Ghislaine at this cabin in his Manhattan mansion, which was eventually raided by police. Thereafter it was presented as evidence in Maxwell’s trial, as part of prosecutors’ attempts to show that she and Epstein were “partners in crime”.
The third wheel on that trip was Prince Andrew himself. Presumably he took the photo? That’s a typical question with those three, with the notorious picture of Andrew with his arm round the hip of the then 17-year-old Virginia Roberts – while Ghislaine smirks in the background – often believed to have been taken by Epstein himself. Quite why the Prince and Princess of Wales wish to form a new photo trio with Uncle Andy is a mystery. But it comes across as the clearest signal that Andrew’s “banishment” from the family is the type we could all live with: one where you get a free mansion, don’t have to work, and all your significant rellies appear to believe your side of the story and are happy enough to give you a helping hand. The comeback will be greater than the setback – or at least of commensurate size.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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