It was Sunday morning that Prince Andrew realized he had made a terrible mistake. Even a quick glance on Twitter revealed that his now infamous Newsnight interview, in which he attempted to set the record straight about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, had backfired spectacularly. The interview was unanimously deemed a car crash on social media and in scorning press coverage ever since it aired.
The criticism of the duke has been devastating, the fallout epic. On Monday, corporate giant KPMG announced it was ending its £100,000 a year sponsorship of the duke’s Pitch@Palace business initiative, and today, Standard Chartered also announced it was withdrawing its support. Some of the duke’s other charities have refused to comment on whether they will continue to have Andrew as their patron.
Andrew’s daughter Princess Eugenie, who cofounded the Anti-Slavery Collective, is privately said to be “very worried” about how the scandal—which links Andrew to Epstein, who was accused of trafficking underage girls—might impact the organization. Nonetheless, Eugenie and her sister, Princess Beatrice, as well as their mother, Sarah Ferguson, and the rest of the royal family, are standing united behind Andrew. It is, sources say, Queen Elizabeth’s wish for her family to rally around her second (and some say favorite) son.
Despite reports that the damaging interview has caused divisions within the family (Prince Charles is said to be furious that the fallout from the program has wiped his current tour of New Zealand off the front pages), courtiers and royal sources have told Vanity Fair that Andrew has his brother’s support, as well as that of the wider family.
“It’s the Queen’s modus operandi to stick together in times of trouble,” said the Queen’s biographer Sarah Gristwood. “She won’t have any breaking of the ranks, and that’s irrespective of whether Andrew is the favorite son. That said, this must be stretching it, because what he’s done is the least welcome thing anyone could do to their mother, especially at the age of 93. He has let the side down. Everything he said in that interview was couched in the wrong terms.”
While it is not known whether the Queen watched the TV interview, Andrew sought approval from “higher up” for the interview to go ahead. As Vanity Fair revealed this past summer, Andrew spoke to his mother about the allegations that he had sex with Virginia Roberts when she was 17. He was at Balmoral with her when news broke that Epstein died in a New York jail cell in August.
According to a family source, he told her what he has said in public, denying allegations that he had sex with Roberts, now Roberts Giuffre, when she was a minor. “As his mother, she believed him, and she still does,” said a source close to the Queen.
“What we are seeing is the royal family’s herd instinct,” adds the Daily Mail’s veteran royal writer Richard Kay. “They circle the wagon at a time of crisis, and that’s what they’re doing now. When their credibility is called into question, their first strategy is to stand by the family, and their natural instinct is to believe each other. If Andrew has told them he is innocent, they will believe him.”
While Andrew’s relationship with his older brother, Charles, seems to have been strained over the years, there have pointedly not been any leaks out of Clarence House that cast Andrew in a negative light following the Newsnight interview.