At this point, there’s no way to deny that Prince Andrew has brought shame to the Royal Family. His connections to Jeffrey Epstein have raised eyebrows for years, culminating in accusations that he sexually assaulted Virginia Giuffre when she was underage. Giuffre went so far as to take the prince to court, and this ended with Andrew paying Giuffre a hefty settlement though he denies any wrongdoing.
Of course, the settlement itself has caused additional scandal. While the exact amount is undisclosed, Time reports it is estimated at £12 million (or $16.3 million USD). And the Queen is covering at least some of the costs, meaning that taxpayers are helping to foot the settlement for an accused sex offender.
This made the Royal Family look worse than ever, but that’s nothing new for Andrew. He’s been shaming the Queen and those around her since he was a child. In fact, here are the most notable times that he shamed his family in front of the world.
Insanely rude
Last year, a former royal aide spilled some tea about Andrew to The Sun. According to that aide, Andrew treated staff members “in a shocking, appalling way.” Continuing, the aide claimed that the prince has “been incredibly rude to his personal protection officers, literally throwing things on the ground and demanding that they ‘f—ing pick them up.’ No social graces at all.”
This seems to cement a 2010 Wikileaks-published cable that painted Andrew as a rude royal. As Express reports, the leaked cable came from an American ambassador who claimed Andrew cursed in front of people, mocked France, and said that both America and England have “stupid governments.”
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Destructive prankster
Prince Andrew apparently likes to play pranks on other people. And in 1984, the targets of a particularly cruel prank were none other than reporters following Andrew during his tour of California. The prank took place at a photo opportunity for a new low-income housing project in the Watts suburb of Los Angeles.
The 24-year-old prince seemingly held a grudge against the press for the excessive tabloid coverage of his two-year relationship with American softcore actress Koo Stark, which had ended (via AP reporter Norm Clarke). Whatever his reasons, Andrew decided to grab a construction work’s spray gun and sprayed the group of roughly 50 journalists with white paint!
This caused quite a stir because it endangered the safety of the reporters as well as damaged their clothing and equipment. In fact, one photographer with the London Daily Mail, Allan Davidson, said he suffered $4,000 damage to his clothes and camera, according to UPI.
Andrew wasn’t exactly remorseful over the act. He summed his thoughts up quite nicely after spraying the press, saying simply: “I enjoyed that.”
Annoying police
It’s one thing to push reporters around. But would you believe that Andrew has been a royal terror to the police?
As Vanity Fair reports, in 2010 Andrew allegedly hit a police officer with his vehicle. The police looked into the incident, but there were no further statements and certainly no consequences for the careless prince.
Perhaps it was the lack of consequences that emboldened Andrew to ram the gates at Windsor Great Park in 2016 (via Daily Mail). The sensor in his car didn’t work and rather than take a one-mile detour, Andrew rammed the gates open. Once again, police looked into the matter and declined to press charges.
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A hellish child
You might think Andrew’s worst tendencies manifested in adulthood. However, it seems he has been very difficult to deal with since he was a young child.
As a youth, Andrew reportedly had charming hobbies like kicking dogs and swiping at horses’ legs, according to the Daily Mail. Additionally, he loved to taunt the guards on duty. One day one guard enough of this and, as the Daily Mail reports, “took a swipe at Andrew that left him sprawled on the floor with a black eye.” Amusingly, this guard offered to resign, but royal writer Ingrid Seward claims that the Queen took his side over the young prince’s!
In another incident, horse grooms got sick of how Andrew was treating their horses. The solution was simple: “two grooms picked him up, threw him into a dung heap and shoveled manure all over him.”
A nightmare to taxpayers
Previously, we noted the public anger that British taxpayers may be helping foot the bill for Prince Andrew’s legal settlement with sex abuse accuser Virginia Giuffre. However, Andrew has been a nightmare to taxpayers for a long, long time.
For example, Andrew has a love of traveling in the most expensive and outlandish ways possible (something they reference on Netflix’s The Crown). This includes an incident where, as Vanity Fair reports, he took “a helicopter just 50 miles to a lunch with Arab dignitaries, at a cost of almost $5,000.” This gave the prince the unflattering nickname “Air Miles Andy.”
Furthermore, in 2011 and 2012, The London Economic reported that Andrew had a travel bill of $500,000. Part of what makes this absurd is that he stepped down from being a U.K. trade envoy in 2011, but he kept spending oodles of taxpayer money to travel around the world. And in 2019, Vanity Fair reported that Andrew spent $20,000 simply to travel to a golf tournament!
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Accusation of racism
It was a major scandal when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle revealed to Oprah that someone in the Royal Family expressed concerns about the skin color of their unborn child. To many, this was confirmation that the Royal Family had a nasty racism problem.
Of course, Prince Andrew was ahead of the curve when it comes to alleged royal racism. As The Guardian reported, Andrew was once accused of using the N-word when talking to a senior political aide.
The aide, Rohan Silva, claims Andrew used the offensive term when they met at Buckingham Palace in 2012. Silva asked Andrew if the government department responsible for trade “could be doing a better job.”
Andrew’s response, according to Silva, was, “Well, if you’ll pardon the expression, that really is the [N-word] in the woodpile.”
Buckingham Palace denies that Andrew said this, of course.
Other controversial connections
Obviously, Prince Andrew is in the headlines due to his connections with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. However, Vanity Fair reports that Andrew has had many other shady connections over the years beyond Epstein.
For example, Andrew accepted a $30,000 gold necklace from a Libyan arms smuggler as a gift for his daughter Princess Beatrice. The prince also visited corrupt Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose son-in-law later bought a mansion from Andrew for nearly $5 million more than its asking price. Additionally, Andrew invited Mohamed Sakher El Materi, son-in-law of corrupt Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, for lunch at Buckingham Palace.
None of these are quite on the same level as being seeming friends with a convicted sex offender. But it all adds up to show that the prince may have dubious and questionable ethics.