What can the King do about Prince Andrew scandals?

Sean CoughlanRoyal correspondent

Prince Andrew and King Charles at the funeral of the Duchess of Kent

Prince Andrew's reputation has taken another hammer blow with newspaper front pages revealing an email suggesting that he was in contact with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein much longer than he previously claimed.

They are intensely damaging allegations for Prince Andrew.

The reported email casts direct doubt on his version of events in his BBC Newsnight interview that he'd cut off ties with Epstein after meeting him in New York in December 2010, where the pair had been photographed together.

The intimate tone of the email Andrew is alleged to have sent - "We are in this together" - also undermines attempts to suggest they were never close.

Sarah Ferguson was also caught up in an Epstein email scandal

Scandal hasn't exactly been a stranger to the Duke of York.

The email published by the Sun and Mail on Sunday is reported to be from February 2011 and earlier this year another batch of emails from that same time emerged, also suggesting that Andrew's connections with Epstein had carried on months later than he claimed, which prompted a similar round of scathing headlines.

But what are the consequences? Each scandal is followed by calls for Prince Andrew to face some kind of royal sanction. So what pressure can the King and the Royal Family actually apply? How could they distance themselves?

The next big family get-together for the royals is Christmas in Sandringham. And it seems unlikely that Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson will be invited. He'll be frozen out. And don't expect to see him in the background in the King's Christmas message, any sightings will have been edited out.

The only King that Andrew is likely to see will be if Good King Wenceslas comes up on the Christmas carol playlist.

Andrew missed last year's traditional royal Christmas because of an alleged Chinese spy scandal and that exclusion seems likely to continue for another year. It won't have helped that Sarah Ferguson has been in her own Epstein email scandal - with seven of her UK charities severing ties with her.

There have been repeated calls for Prince Andrew to be removed from Royal Lodge, his 30-room mansion in Windsor. But Andrew has his own independent lease with the Crown Estate that lasts until 2078. Much of the costs of moving there were front-loaded when he took on the property in 2003 and there's little obvious incentive for Andrew to leave now.

If Andrew can afford to pay his bills at Royal Lodge then it's not obvious how he can be dislodged.

Royal sources say that the King has tried many levers to apply pressure, like cutting off Andrew's funding last year.

But Prince Andrew seems to have cultivated his own independent sources of funding since leaving public life, including business connections with China, the Gulf States and a recently curtailed project with a Dutch start-up company. He has proved financially resilient, despite what must be significant costs in paying for his own security.

There have been calls to strip Andrew of his titles, such as the Duke of York. That idea has considerable public support, with a YouGov poll over the summer showing that 67% of people backed removing his remaining titles.

It would require the intervention of Parliament, but there is a legal mechanism. It was used during the First World War to sanction aristocrats who had UK titles but were fighting in the German army.

So it's not impossible that such a symbolic move might be pursued if the drip-drip of scandal became too much to ignore.

Andrew has remained a Knight of the Garter, a high chivalric honour, which in theory could be taken away. Although at present he doesn't take part in the annual public procession in Windsor and is confined to the private parts of the annual ceremony.

There was once an elaborate process for excluding someone from being a member of the Order of the Garter, known as "degradation". But that hasn't been used since the 18th Century. More recently members were simply removed, such as the leaders of Britain's opponents in the First World War, Wilhelm II of Germany and Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary.

Benito Mussolini, Robert Mugabe and Nicolae Ceausescu all had honours withdrawn. Although the latter, the Romanian dictator, had his Order of the Bath honour taken away the day before he was shot by a firing squad, so it might not have seemed his biggest worry.

On past form, the Palace has preferred a more subtle approach to removing status. There was embarrassment that Prince Andrew remained a counsellor of state, who could deputise for the King if he was out the country or was unwell. Rather than directly remove him, other new counsellors were created in 2022 so that Prince Andrew would never have to be used.

Prince Andrew no longer takes part in the public Order of the Garter service

Prince Andrew has already lost his HRH title and military patronages - and since he's no longer a "working royal" he doesn't have any official royal duties. It also meant that Buckingham Palace stopped being answerable for his behaviour.

There have been suggestions that the Royal Family should go a step further and "banish" Prince Andrew from public view.

He's already not allowed to attend royal public events. Instead his appearances are limited to private, family events, such as funerals or memorials. That arrangement seems likely to continue. Not least because as head of the Church of England, the King couldn't exactly be seen barring his brother from church services.

But the Palace must be concerned by these relentless waves of scandal crashing over such a close relation to the King. It threatens to drown out their own more high-minded projects. And it remains unknown what might still emerge from the trawl of information surrounding Epstein.

Campaigners against the monarchy say there should be a wider investigation into what the Royal Family might know about Prince Andrew's links to Epstein.

"This isn't just about family. It's not a private matter," says Graham Smith, chief executive of Republic.

The BBC has contacted the Duke of York's office for comment.