Andrew’s embarrassing settlement for the royals, but it could have been worse

Instability is one of the British monarchy’s most stable traditions.

The Queen and Prince Andrew at Royal Ascot Racecourse in June 2017. Picture: Getty Images

The sweatiness of Prince Andrew will not be discussed under oath. No court will probe whether he did indeed step inside Pizza Express, Woking. The world will be spared further discussion of his private life, and indeed private parts.

It was announced on Tuesday that Virginia Giuffre would ­receive an undisclosed sum from the prince to settle out of court.

It is a mark of how disastrous his position had become that this is a good outcome for the royals.  Last year Giuffre, now living in Western Australia, filed a civil lawsuit, alleging that Andrew had sexually assaulted her when she was 17, an allegation he has repeatedly denied.

A hearing billed Giuffre v Prince Andrew, once seemingly unthinkable, had started to look likely. Then came the joint letter from the parties’ lawyers this week saying a deal had been reached and the case would be dropped; Andrew’s legal team said he had “never intended to malign Giuffre’s character”. (It had previously suggested that she might “suffer from false memories” and was looking for a “payday”.) It did not say how much the prince is stumping up (a figure of £12m, or $23m, is rumoured) or where it would come from. Buckingham Palace has ­declined to comment.

The palace has long experience with problematic princes. The habit of putting not merely the royal family’s heirs but also its spares before the public eye began during the reign of Queen Victoria – and almost immediately backfired. She had hoped to make the monarchy relatable; instead she drew the spotlight to the antics of her eldest son, Edward. “Dirty ­Bertie” was dissolute, dissipated and apparently unembarrassable: a pew at his coronation was ­reserved for his mistresses. (The women seated in “the king’s loose box” included the great-grandmother of Camilla Parker-Bowles, Prince Charles’s wife.)

Yet even by the standard set by former princes, Andrew has ­excelled. Settling with Giuffre is perhaps his first prudent act in the proceedings. In 2019 he gave an ­astonishingly ill-advised BBC ­interview, in which he insisted he was incapable of sweating. (Giuffre had said that she had danced with him in a nightclub and he had sweated so profusely that it was like “it was raining”.) The prince also expressed an almost whimsical amusement in the claim that his royal personage had, on the day of the alleged assault, instead been in Pizza Express, a quotidian chain restaurant, in Woking, a quotidian London suburb. It is hard to imagine a less impressive dry-run for a court cross-examination.

Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre.

The case, combined with fears for the Queen’s health, has led some to wonder for the ­future of the crown. It has certainly been a shaky 12 months. The Queen ­described 1992 as an “annus horribilis”; the past year has surely been horribilior. In April her husband, Philip, died. Her grandson Harry’s graceless defection to America, not to mention his habit of oversharing in interviews, must rankle. On Wednesday police launched an investigation into ­allegations that a Saudi national who donated to Charles’s foundation was offered help to secure British citizenship and honours. Perhaps most damaging, there are rumours that the Queen will fork out to pay some of Andrew’s settlement. And Andrew certainly looks done for: in January the royal family, in effect, kicked him out, stripping him of his military titles and the right to use HRH in an official capacity.

But reports of the death of the monarchy are usually exaggerated, and the idea that it has no ­future has a long past. Before he died in 1910, Edward VII had ­become so depressed by anti-aristocratic feeling that he introduced his son George as “the last King of England”. The Queen’s ­father, George VI, feared that the crown he inherited would “crumble”. It didn’t then; it is unlikely to now. Instability is one of the monarchy’s most stable traditions.