Who advised the Queen to walk into the Abbey escorted by Andrew??

[TinyTortoise]

This seems to be the most tone deaf and damaging decision. It's a public facing event with international leaders and royals. If it was a closed family gathering I could understand it - he is her son still- but why on earth would they allow him to escort her to her seat?! He should be invisible from now on and never represent the RF again. He could have attended and stood somewhere out of the way. She could have chosen anyone to escort her. It's staggeringly awful!

imagine also going to your dad or husband's memorial and having the world pick you apart like this

Oh for goodness sake. Imagine not choosing to support your pervert son and therefore giving nobody any reason to 'pick you apart'

imagine also going to your dad or husband's memorial and having the world pick you apart like this

imagine having to pay out millions to a trafficked woman who you may have slept with......

@DingleyDel

She clearly doesn’t care. I think it’s sending a message that she still stands by him. Unfortunately I’ve lost all respect I had for the Queen after this whole debacle.

Completely agree

@ididntevennotice

imagine also going to your dad or husband's memorial and having the world pick you apart like this

Oh for goodness sake. Imagine not choosing to support your pervert son and therefore giving nobody any reason to 'pick you apart'

There is absolutely zero evidence that Prince Andrew is, or has ever been, a pervert.

Yes it's one thing to signal support for your son once, being photographed in the same car going to church at Balmoral or something, but this has been repeated too often now imho to be anything other than deliberate.

Having said that, the Queen may have been hi-jacked by PA at the memorial service, by him continuing to lead her when it had been intended that the Dean step in, but I think it would have been more appropriate on such a public occasion if he had not been assigned an escort role in the first place.

And I agree with pp that the good things about the D of E and his award scheme were overshadowed somewhat and yes it must be horrible to have the memorial service of a loved family member picked over and scrutinised in such detail, but that could have been avoided very easily had PA been firmly seated at the back of the royal party and not allowed to process anywhere!

And this sort of error I suspect has come about because no one is actually fully in charge ATM for obvious reasons.

Well the paper are now crammed with Andrew's latest wrong doing in the High Court no less, he seems to have accepted 750,000gbp for a high profile Turkish fraudster! Both him and Fergie it seems have had money transferred from known fraudsters that have defrauded the wife of a political activist that is jailed in Turkey of millions and millions of pounds.

So this is another highlight we can look forward to as a shining example of Andrew's good character and the Queen's lack of judgement. She must have known about the fraud case and STILL took the weasel with her to the memorial. It beggars belief.

Is there any murky, shady sleazy underworld that Andrew hasn't been a part of one wonders...

You know with all their wealth, palaces and privilege they think they are such marvellous business people. Greedy, entitled and tone death.
£750,000 for a passport, beggars belief that he would get involved.

The memorial should have been a private affair.

There was no need for it to be public, and for anyone to be 'picking' over anything. They seemingly no longer care what the public thinks or the national moral compass. Values are there to be discarded if it is convenient to do so.

I am very disappointed in them. This a serious crisis that is just about to get much worse for Andrew and Sarah according to the reports. A long the lines of the period of time when Diana died is the level of dissatisfaction I am feeling. We see a total lack of real understanding, empathy or emotion for the victims, they are irrelevant to the royal family, that is singularly the most offensive thing to me. The Queen should have had the decency to say no to Andrew and explain why in no uncertain terms.

I can’t believe anyone is trying to make excuses for PA

In fairness I've not seen anyone make excuses for Andrew's choices re VG, only on what he did at the service and various other past ghastliness.
It's true folk keep saying "He was never convicted!!", which seems redundant since IMO he'd never have seen the inside of a court no matter what he'd done - after all if the Queen could stop Burrell's trial by "suddenly remembering a conversation", what might she have done to keep her own son out of a witness box?

What there has been is a lot of criticism of the Queen for allowing Andrew to escort her in public at all, and that I definitely agree with

Personally I suspect that HM does not believe the allegations about Andrew. He has probably assured her in a heartfelt way a la Emily M that he is entirely innocent. She chooses to believe that.
The murky world of dodgy deals and scrabbling about for money is probably one she doesn’t understand, having never had to think about such things herself.
It’s partly a generational thing, partly the love of a mother for a favourite son.
I also suspect he muscled in at the last moment to escort her, leaving her no choice. He’s a wily, self regarding narcissistic toad. He cares more for himself that he does for the image of his family. That much is clear.

They seemingly no longer care what the public thinks or the national moral compass. Values are there to be discarded if it is convenient to do so

Precisely, though at least with the Queen she manages to keep most of it under wraps, aided by a so far sycophantic press and the "poor old lady" monarchists

Unfortunately, with Andrew and Charles, it's very far from being under wraps despite all the backroom influence they can ring to bear ... in fact it makes me wonder what else they'd rather we didn't know about, if even the few details which have come crawling out are so damaging

Highgrove was bought by the PoW using his own private funds

Highgrove was bought by the Duchy of Cornwall. Charles pays rent to the Duchy which is then magically recycled back into his own pocket in the form of Duchy profits.

Neat, eh?

You are massively underestimating the number of aides and advisors the Queen has anastasia she is not some little old granny as green as grass knitting in the corner and admiring her spring garden! She has the best of the best surrounding her at all times, advising her carefully about everything, she will trust them implicitly and for decades, it is their duty to report to her everything, in detail.

She will know everything, including all the things that we don't! She will have known what Andrew was doing for years, but probably dismissed it and allowed him to have 'his fun'.

The Queen is very well informed, there is nothing that escapes her. So please do not make excuses for her, she has shown total contempt and disregard for the victims, knowingly.

The D of E seems to have been an awkward old bugger in lots of ways, but also did a lot of good for young people, and that got overshadowed, didn't it?

Look on the bright side. His many nasty racist 'gaffes' got overshadowed, too.

Had he not been married to who he was married to, he'd have been seen for precisely what he was: a rude, obnoxious and thoroughly unpleasant human being. 'Not speaking ill of the dead' is no reason to pretend the truth doesn't exist.

The apple has not fallen very far from the tree.

@Blossomtoes

But surely you know *@Andouillette*, the RF doesn’t have private funds. They never spend their own money because they haven’t got any. They haven’t got part time cleaning jobs, don’t you know?

Thank you @Blossomtoes, I needed a smail this morning. And yes of course, silly me!

Perhaps the opportunity to contribute via cleaning jobs will soon arise for them, perhaps even faster than Andrew imagines, if he is up to knowing how to turn on a vacuum that is. Perhaps we will keep on the easier jobs scrubbing the loos does not require him to work anything technical.

I don't get the outrage. He is surely entitled to attend a service for his own father. He is still his mother's son no matter what, and as he apparently lives near her it seems reasonable that he would be the one to accompany her. What a thing to get worked up over.

It seems to be, in every murky case, follow the money trail... .

That is allegedly what led PA to Epstein in the first place.

And sorry but that's another reason why a republic would be better. Just the very fact of being royal places you in the irreconcilable position of being at a level of society where you want and are expected to mix with other royals and people who have the level of wealth that buys them complete privacy and yet you can't earn any money of your own because of press intrusion. And so you become susceptible to favours ... and then beholden ... sometimes to very unsavoury people.

We've seen it demonstrated time and time again, not only with the dodgy dealings of Andrew and Fergie, but also with Sophie Wessex falling victim to the Mazher Mahmood scam, the circumstances surrounding Harry & Meghan's departure, to the more benign practice of various royals selling rights to their weddings to Hello magazine. It's all a big scramble for dosh!

Imagine if Louis wants to get a proper job in twenty year's time? Press intrusion will not allow it, unless he becomes a game keeper in the middle of the Scottish Highlands or something. But if he wanted to become a doctor or a lawyer, it would be pretty much impossible for confidentiality reasons unless he works on a remote Island in the South Pacific . It's an intolerable position to put someone in.

And the problem won't go away. George will be ok financially but will be forced to take on a role he probably won't want. So those DC face a life of enforced idleness or servitude. If there was a middle way, I think it would have been discovered by now.

It's certainly not a future I would want for my children.

Imho, HRH the Queen should be the last reigning monarch.

@Swayingpalmtrees

You are massively underestimating the number of aides and advisors the Queen has anastasia she is not some little old granny as green as grass knitting in the corner and admiring her spring garden! She has the best of the best surrounding her at all times, advising her carefully about everything, she will trust them implicitly and for decades, it is their duty to report to her everything, in detail.

She will know everything, including all the things that we don't! She will have known what Andrew was doing for years, but probably dismissed it and allowed him to have 'his fun'.

The Queen is very well informed, there is nothing that escapes her. So please do not make excuses for her, she has shown total contempt and disregard for the victims, knowingly.

I suspect though that reporting unfavourably about her own children might be a different matter.

I agree, and I am/was a royalist!