Andrew - continuing his effort to end the Monarchy Part 3

[simpsonthecat]

Here we are

Previous thread
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/the_royal_family/5487636-andrew-continuing-his-effort-to-end-the-monarchy-part-2?page=20&reply=150676336

@TightlyLacedCorset
Yep - she bestowed this on him in 2011. He had previously been made a Knight Commander in 2003. Both of these were erased in 2025.

Here you go, @TightlyLacedCorset; it's all a bit buried now under the latest horrors, and this is all I could find:

Typo

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/mar/31/prince-andrew-honoured-by-queen

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdr232j8kgvo

Somebody who may have been brought up with the idea that 'Droit du Seigneur' was just part and parcel of being an upper class male.

She was born in 1926 not 1426!
By all accounts her father was not like this at all, so she basically decided her son should be able to do what he liked because he was a Royal.

Well exactly! And the jury is still out as to whether it even existed to begin with. A lot of historians now believe it to have been a myth,

I would love to see an end to the royal family - they are just people like you and me. Elevated to a sort of godlike existence..

What awful pressure to put on a child - George and his siblings . What an outdated and unnatural way to live. I hope that this latest scandal is the beginning of the end of the royal family as we know it.

Your first paragraph is odd to me. I wonder how many people believe they are godlike? It's not the Middle Ages.

Have you been reading too much Catherine Cookson 😂

The Queen was also going to make Andrew an Admiral on his 60th birthday, in 2020 and fly some Union Jacks, among other celebrations. That got scuppered with the Epstein situation a few months earlier.

She certainly had form for bestowing honours on him every time a scandal broke out. It is starting to look like she really believed in the sacredness of the RF and how they are very much better and more deserving than the entire population of the country

I am being flippant, but the point I am making is that there is no reason to believe that the Queen's attitude was different to the many men (and the Duchess of York) who excused Epstein's behaviour or that she would have thought there was something morally wrong about Andrew having sex with Virginia Giuffre.

Her behaviour suggests otherwise and I think her background makes it more rather than less likely that she would have thought it normal to turn a blind eye.

So if you are going to have a 96 year old Head of State with outdated attitudes who foists her entire family on us then you need to have some kind of system where that Head of State is told in no uncertain terms that she cannot do that. That is what is missing, and yes, that is the fault of politicians in the main, but because of the system of Monarchy where politicians cosy up to the Crown when they are meant to be holding the Crown to account and acting on our behalf, they do the opposite. .

Fair comment although I haven't actually read any Catherine Cookson!

But a large element of 'Me Too' was recognition that relative power is important to consent. If the refusal of a man's advances means that you lose your job, how much power do you have?

"To mark his fifty-first birthday, and a day after the Epstein scandal broke, the Queen gave her own response to the controversy. She made Andrew Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George." - Andrew Lownie in Entitled. It's on his substack today if anyone wants to read it.

A scandal breaks out, Andrew tells his mother that there's no truth to it and she gives him an honourable toffee. I have to say that before all of this, I was quite neutral towards QE2. Didn't venerate her, didn't dislike her. But now having learnt so much about her favouritism, changing laws secretly to benefit her family at our expense, protecting and enabling her terrible son at all costs and so much more, I don't like her at all. I am beginning to think she was the worst of the lot.

I think it says a lot when Andrew was wailing about him being the Queen's 2nd son and how could he be treated like he was (whatever that meant), when removed to Wood Farm. He was led to believe that by the Queen, meaning that he could do anything and she would protect him.

The Sandringham Walk is more like child-celebrity-mania than anything. Absolutely ridiculous carry on last Christmas. I sincerely hope that stops.

So nothing to do with gods then.

Nothing like a bit of poor wee lass making it good by marrying an older gentleman while really in love with Robson Green 😂😂

I see Mandelson has been arrested - and the first set of files is due to be released in early March.

Archive link to Sky News page https://archive.is/zhstQ

I saw that Mandelson had been arrested? hadn’t seen about the files. Thank you

Second item on the Sky page if you scroll down

Sorry be dim but which files? I thought all EF have been released.

Access to enormous wealth and privileges, having people bow and scrape to them wherever they go - bowing to anyone in this day and age seems crazy.

Appearing on the front of magazines regularly...they are no better than any of us. People lining the streets to wave at them, that awful Christmas day walk with people camping out to see them - they have done nothing to deserve this elevated status. It seems madnesss to me.

@NoDrums "But now having learnt so much about her favouritism, changing laws secretly to benefit her family at our expense, protecting and enabling her terrible son at all costs and so much more, I don't like her at all. I am beginning to think she was the worst of the lot."

Quite. Her aim was to preserve their wealth and privilege at all costs. It find it so strange and unsettling that, even when faced with the facts (such as secretly changing laws and paying £12m to silence a trafficked woman) people still continue to vehemently defend the indefensible in 2026.

These were the documents relating to Mandelson's appointment as Ambassador to the US, over a highly respected civil service ambassador who was already in post, when his close links to Epstein were public knowledge and he had a history of financial impropriety so should not have passed vetting.

Starmer survived a vote in the Commons by agreeing to release the files immediately (with ones that might need security approval going first to the security committee).

Well from a stance of relative indifference, I have now taken the view that there should be a plague on all their houses. I've lost what little respect I had for the RF and I look on in bemusement now at them carrying out their intermittent "work" - onerous that it is for the poor wee mites.