Prince Andrew may cost the Queen dearly

Queen Elizabeth’s personal wealth is estimated at 440 million pounds ($550 million). She’ll doubtless pony up whatever is needed to keep her most darling son out of the defendant’s box.

Not that Prince Andrew is a pauper. His net worth has been pegged at around 32.5 million pounds ($55 million). And he got an annual stipend of around 250,000 pounds ($400,000) from mummy, for performing royal duties as part of “The Firm.” But now he’s been punted from the family enterprise, so there goes that pin money.

Even divested of His Royal Highness title, at least in practice, though not officially stripped of the aristocratic honorific. Just as Diana, via divorce, and Harry and Meghan, via fleeing the House of Windsor’s clutches, were similarly shorn. But Diana will get HRH back when William is king, he’s vowed.

What can’t ever be restored or rehabilitated is Andrew’s reputation and character, which weren’t of lofty stature even long before the princeling was pulled into the toxic orbit of boldface sex traffickers. He’s been pretty much awash in scandal and fiascos since returning from the Falklands War as a navy helicopter pilot hero and the subsequent ill-fated marriage to Sarah Ferguson, grubbiest of all royal in-law appendages. (She once offered a sit-down with her ex to an undercover journalist posing as a businessman — for nearly $1 million) While uncoupled, they’ve continued to share a mansion in Great Windsor Park.

Chronically louche and laddish, with a heavy dollop of privilege, Randy Andy’s rep is beyond tatters. He is deep into the realm of creepy, as he attempts to fight off accusations of coerced sex with a minor, the civil lawsuit of Virginia Giuffre green-lighted to proceed by a New York City judge last week. Giuffre has alleged that she was pimped out at 17 by Andrew’s long-time friends, the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and his former accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell — procurer and groomer of the victims. A bid to have the suit tossed was, well, tossed, Judge Lewis Kaplan ruling that terms of the $500,000 (U.S.) accord reached between Giuffre and Epstein more than a decade ago — to avert another civil trial — didn’t shield Andrew from this legal action.

He’ll be on his own, however, as Buckingham Palace made clear in a brutally terse statement released Thursday. “The Duke of York will continue not to undertake any public duties and is defending this case as a private citizen.”

That’s the disclaimer. In truth, Andrew will likely have to tug at his mother’s purse-strings.

Andrew, ninth in line to the throne, was also denuded of all his military affiliations and royal patronages, which have been “returned to the Queen.” Among those many military affiliations are his position as commander-in-chief of three Canadian regiments, not including the disbanded Canadian Airborne. Now the City of York MP is even calling for Andrew to relinquish his Duke of York title. Un-duking Andrew would require an act of Parliament.

The jowly 61-year-old has been hollowed out since a 45minute meeting with his mother last week, reportedly receiving not an ounce of pity from his brother Charles, the Prince of Wales, or William, both of whom are anxious to be detached from this mess.

According to reports from a feasting Fleet Street, Andrew is being urged to settle with Giuffre before the case moves into the discovery stage, where he would be put through a grilling by her attorneys, under oath and on video. If he refuses to co-operate, he could be found in default, with the judge ruling against him in his absence, branded a sex abuser and ordered to pay compensation. He couldn’t be extradited but, even if never stepping foot in the U.S. again, Andrew would spend the rest of his life being chased by bailiffs. In the next few days, it’s expected Andrew will learn whether Giuffre’s lawyers will seek to depose other members of the royal family, specifically Sarah and the couple’s two daughters.

At the very least, Andrew is being urged to spare his poor mother any more shame and grief.

Frankly, it is inconceivable that he will ever see the inside of a U.S. courtroom. But the beloved 95-year-old sovereign, who will this summer celebrate her Platinum Jubilee, has surely been pushed to the absolute limit of what she can endure. For her sake, more than any other, Andrew is being implored to pre-emptively meet a financial demand that, as speculation has it, could be up to $15 million (U.S.). Which would have to come out of the Queen’s fortune.

Andrew was the child she most doted on, her golden boy, born when she was more at ease with monarchy and motherhood. “Andrew has always been the Queen’s favourite son and he has never done anything wrong in her eyes,” Princess Diana’s butler Paul Burrell said in the documentary, “The Royal Family at War.”

But even she must be cringing. The poor woman thought 1992 — the year of the great fire at Windsor Castle — was her annus horribilis. It hardly holds a candle to 2021.

Widowed after more than seven decades of marriage to Prince Philip. The photo of Elizabeth in mourning at her husband’s funeral, sitting alone — physically distanced, wearing a black mask — was heartbreaking. For the first time in memory, she was forced by doctors to book off sick from planned appearances following a brief hospital stay. The woman has extraordinary stamina, but she’s a nonagenarian, after all.

Yet, while the Queen was observing all pandemic protocols, with a country plunged into repeated lockdowns, her government ministers and officials were enjoying booze-infused knees-up gatherings at 10 Downing Street and Westminster. They were violating the strictures put into place for everybody else, including a bash on the eve of Philip’s funeral, when the nation was in formal mourning. While the hoi polloi coped with severe restrictions, socializing banned, the political nabobs blithely caroused, the Tory shindigs becoming so routine that were known as “WineTime Fridays.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in full crisis mode.

For the disrespectful transgression before Philip’s funeral, a 10 Downing spokesperson, on Friday, issued an unprecedented apology to the Queen. “It’s deeply regrettable that this took place at a time of national mourning.”

That’s the least of her worries. Her despicably wayward son is the dagger to her heart.