Harry and his wife, Meghan, stepped down as working royals on Jan. So has Prince Harry, Charles’ youngest son. Harry and MeghanĪndrew is not the only prince who’s been a source of controversy in the royal family in recent years.

Virginia Giuffre (then Roberts) with Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell in a photo released with court documents. As a result, Andrew can no longer use “His Royal Highness” in any capacity, a royal source told NBC News at the time, and gave up a dozen military titles and more than 100 patronages. In a brutal and humiliating exercise in damage control, in 2022, Queen Elizabeth stripped her second son of his military titles and patronages.

He also declared that he never meant to malign her character. Buckingham Palace said in a statement that Andrew would fight the case “as a private citizen.” Andrew and Giuffre would later reach a legal settlement in which he agreed to make a substantial donation to her charity in support of victims’ rights. In August 2021, a judge in the United States allowed a civil lawsuit brought by Giuffre to proceed. Soon after, he stepped back from his public duties.ĭespite a widely circulated picture of the pair together, Andrew maintained that he never met Giuffre, who said she was 17 when the British royal sexually abused her. Top of the list of people to be managed is the king’s younger brother, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, who has been tainted by allegations of sexual abuse related to his long association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his confidant, the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who was found guilty of child sex trafficking in 2021.Īllegations by Virginia Giuffre that she had been trafficked to Andrew and forced to have sex with him dogged Andrew for years and, in November 2019, a high-profile BBC interview with the royal that was clearly intended to push back on the claims backfired spectacularly. “The royal family is one of the most visible and tenuous aspects of the crown’s overall brand,” said Cele Otnes, co-author of “Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture.” “It’s hard to manage people,” she said. Past and ongoing issues with Prince Andrew, Prince Harry, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and even his wife, Camilla, could overshadow the new king’s rule if they are not carefully managed, royal experts say. With his coronation this weekend, the real royal work begins, and it involves navigating scandals and tricky family relationships that could tarnish his reign and the monarchy itself. King Charles III famously waited a lifetime to wear the crown.

Dirty Together by Meghan March