Mummy’s boy Prince Andrew is finally learning the lessons he missed as a child
With every new headline, Prince Andrew increasingly resembles a greedy Roald Dahl character. But a tipping point looms.
May Prince Andrew be a warning to all parents.
This is what happens when you’re Mummy’s favourite.
Queen Elizabeth II was a hard-working parent who did what she could with the hand she was dealt. Prince Philip too, though he escaped criticism about his paternal achievements during the formative years of the couple’s four children.
She bore the children, handed them to nannies, then got back to business.
Until Andrew.
As numerous accounts over the years have revealed, the Queen was “a slightly absent mother” to her older children, Charles and Anne. Then the swinging ’60s hit and Andrew, the third child, came along.
In one of his many books and stories about the royal family, author and royal reporter Valentine Low described Elizabeth as an “indulgent mother” to Andrew – the original “spare”.
With him she could “sit back a bit” to enjoy motherhood.
“I can read him bedtime stories,” she once allegedly said of a childhood that lacked “boundaries”.
That penchant for fiction may be the only thing Andrew inherited from his accomplished and inspirational mother.
Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis would surely concur, along with the many millions who watched her 2019 car-crash interview with the Prince as he tried to explain away his bromance with sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, a now-infamous photo with teenage trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre and his lack of an ability to sweat.
Unlike the tireless Princess Anne, Prince William, Princess Catherine and even his own seemingly well-adjusted daughters Beatrice and Eugenie, Andrew increasingly resembles a Roald Dahl character. He’s suckled from the taxpayer teat like Augustus Gloop for too long.
He is the product of the 1960s’ version of “gentle parenting” – when mum and dad were not helicopter parents or tiger moms but a TV dinner family. In never giving him boundaries or a purpose beyond the perennially spare part, they effectively microwaved his development.
There’s the sense he was a kid that was never told “no”; the middle child praised for merely existing. The participation award prince.
After decades spent aimlessly riding the royal gravy train in first class, is it any wonder he’s been so easily wooed by con artists, grifters and creeps like Epstein?
But a tipping point now looms.
A deluge of damaging stories swell and to staunch it, will The Firm finally evict him and punt him into economy?
The BBC reports Prince William met with Andrew’s daughters Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice this week to issue an ultimatum: pack up your Pa from the family mansion or risk losing your own titles.
The headlines worsen with each passing day. Overnight, news of Andrew hosting Epstein, his sex-trafficking accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and disgraced Hollywood producer and convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein at Royal Lodge, the 30-bedroom residence from which the one-time ‘party prince’ is now under pressure to leave.
The trio visited the Windsor mansion for – of all things – Princess Beatrice’s masked ball-themed 18th birthday bash in 2006, two months after an arrest warrant had been issued for Epstein for the sexual assault of a minor in the US.
Meanwhile, tales of Prime Andrew’s arrogant conduct have become sport on social media, including one incident where he allegedly scolded an intimate dinner party guest for failing to properly curtsy.
He may have no sense of humour, if he had any common sense, Andrew should be agitating for his daughters to assume his workload and titles, instead of arguing over unpaid rent and how many stately homes he and ex-wife Sarah Ferguson need to live comfortably.
Eugenie and Beatrice have careers in the private sector and attend major royal events, as well as traditional gatherings like Christmas.
They are also quietly doing charity work for causes like dyslexia and modern slavery while raising their own young families.
It’s time this palace-reared Peter Pan dislodged from Royal Lodge and accepted a more humble life at Frogmore Cottage, where he and Fergie can tend to the veggie garden planted by Meghan Markle, and not be seen until George’s coronation.
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