Ex-Prince Andrew's status as a Falklands War 'hero' fuelled a culture of entitlement that later curdled into years of sordid exploitation and abuse of privilege, royal biographer Tina Brown has claimed in a searing new essay published in London.
The fresh scrutiny of the ex-prince's conduct follows his fall from grace over his association with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and a long-running civil case brought by Virginia Giuffre, which Andrew settled without admitting liability.
He has already been stripped of his military affiliations and patronages and stepped back from public duties; now, writers who have tracked his career are returning to the earlier decades that, they argue, made the current scandals grimly predictable.
In herFRESH H-LLSubstackarticle, pointedly titled 'Can the Andrew File Get Any Worse?,'Brown argues that the problem began early. The former Vanity Fair andNew Yorkereditor says Andrew emerged from the 1982 Falklands conflict with a wildly inflated sense of his importance, stoked by tabloid patriotism and unquestioning press coverage.
He served as a Sea King helicopter co-pilot during the war. It was a supporting role, not a command. Yet Brown writes that the 'jingoistic newspaper accolades spread out on the breakfast table at Balmoral' after his return did lasting damage to his judgment.
Citing a friend from Andrew's early twenties, she says it 'wasn't just the Queen's favouritism' at work. The adulation he received as a supposed war hero, she argues, encouraged a 'farcically warped view of his own minimal abilities.'
According to Brown, that heady mix of maternal indulgence and media myth-making created a young man who expected the world to rearrange itself around his whims. A former associate told her that in his twenties, military helicopters were made available to him 'whenever he wanted,' including for jaunts to the St Andrews golf course.
The suggestion is not simply of a royal bending the rules, but of an institution willing to normalise the absurd.
Once appointed as the UK's special representative for international trade and investment, Andrew carried that sense of impunity into the diplomatic arena, Brown contends.
In the Substack piece, she recalls long-standing complaints from former civil servants that he was 'the bane of the Foreign Office,' allegedly 'running around the world with his rampant sceptre, telling toilet jokes' and spending taxpayers' money on extra hotel rooms for 'cavorting 'masseuses.'
Source: International Business Times UK
