By Max Colchester
LONDON -- Prince Andrew is a prince no more.
After years of damaging headlines over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and allegations that he sexually abused one of his victims, King Charles decided to take the nuclear option on his younger brother: Andrew will be stripped of all his titles and kicked out of the 30-room Windsor mansion he currently lives in.
Buckingham Palace said he would now be known simply as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and he will be relocated to a house on the Sandringham Estate, which the monarch privately owns. Prince Andrew denies allegations of abuse but palace officials said that there had been serious lapses of judgment on his behalf.
The issue had taken on urgency as fresh details surfaced over Andrew's alleged abuse decades ago of a 17-year-old girl introduced to him by Epstein. His accuser Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide this year, penned a memoir published this fall in which she alleges Andrew treated having sex with her as "his birth-right." Andrew has repeatedly said he has no recollection of meeting her, and settled a sex-abuse lawsuit in 2022 for an undisclosed amount.
British police are also looking into recent media claims that Andrew tried to get a police officer assigned for his personal protection to look into Giuffre when the allegations first surfaced. Emails between the prince and Epstein, who also took his own life, continue to dribble out, highlighting the fact that Andrew maintained contact with the financier long after he was jailed for sex offenses back in 2008.
The demotion is unprecedented in scale for the House of Windsor. Andrew will lose the titles Prince, Duke of York, Earl of Inverness, Baron Killyleagh and the style "His Royal Highness."
The last time a British prince was stripped of their "prince" title was during World War I, when the Duke of Cumberland backed his native Germany during the conflict. Andrew will also lose his Order of the Garter, the most senior knighthood in the British realm. The last formal expulsion from that order was Emperor Hirohito of Japan in 1941.
The demotion has been a long time coming. Back in 2019, Charles summoned Prince Andrew to Sandringham to cross-examine him about his friendship with Epstein, after which he concluded that his brother's future role in the family couldn't be saved, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Until now, however, Buckingham Palace had dished out mostly symbolic punishments to the 65-year-old, stripping him of patronages, banning him from turning up to family events like Christmas, and asking him not to use the title "His Royal Highness" in public.
But voices were growing for stronger action, saying the monarch was failing to get at the nub of the problem: in the public's eye, the disgraced prince continues to live...well, like a prince.
"It's quite clear that the public find the fact that he lives in this enormous house extremely irksome," says Robert Hardman, author of The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy. "The king has been trying to get him out of there...it's been going on for years."
Write to Max Colchester at Max.Colchester@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 30, 2025 15:41 ET (19:41 GMT)
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