In “The Palace Papers”, journalist Tina Brown lifts the veil on the secrets of the British monarchy, in particular the less than rosy past of sulphurous Prince Andrew.
His bad reputation was well established, but the journalist does not mince words to qualify the son of Queen Elizabeth II. “Sordid”, “tyrannical”, “crowned money machine” with an annoying habit of “concluding dubious financial agreements with dictators”… Already in his childhood, his attitude horrified his classmates, he explains. -she. They found Andrew unlikable, and Brown writes that he was deeply unpopular at the posh Scottish boarding school in Gordonstoun, where pupils thought he was “big-headed”.
“Unfortunately, he exhibited classic symptoms of what is scientifically recognized as the Dunning-Kruger effect, the cognitive bias that makes people believe they are smarter and more capable than they really are.” He also had a bad reputation for making very inappropriate inappropriate jokes which made him laugh a lot, hence his nickname at the time, “the sneerer”.
The book reviews the failings of the prince even in his little manias. Even after marrying Fergie, her bed would have remained adorned with “fifty teddy bears, many of them dressed as sailors, which the maids had to place in the exact place that Andrew had ordered”, indicates the journalist.
Tina Brown also reports that in 1993, after his split from Sarah Ferguson, Andrew stayed at the Palm Springs mansion of socialite Lee Annenberg, wife of former US Ambassador to the UK Walter Annenberg. He was “locked in his room for two days, apparently watching porn,” she says.
Fergie, a ‘survival’ affair
While Fergie – who today would still continue to live in the same mansion as Andrew despite their divorce (albeit in different wings) – has repeatedly bragged about her closeness to him, Brown has a much different version. Of the history. And to testify to this, she evokes the visit to their home of an American executive who explains that, when Andrew arrived in the room where he was with Fergie, he spoke to him, proclaiming loud and clear: “That what are you doing with that big cow?” she wrote, describing the witness to the scene as “stunned by so much sadism”.
“Whatever the nature of their curious arrangement (between Andrew and Fergie, editor’s note), the deal seems to be that he bails her out when she gets in trouble,” Brown wrote of Sarah Ferguson’s frequent financial worries, adding: “And she supports him when he is beset by scandal”. According to her, between them it is in fact “the symbiosis of pure survival”.
Sarah Ferguson was indeed an infallible support when the scandal of the Epstein affair splashed her former husband and father of her children. Andrew was a close friend of the billionaire pedophile, who authorities say killed himself in prison in 2019 while charged with sex trafficking. “Epstein had made Andrew feel like he had stepped into the big leagues – business, girls, flying, the glittering world of New York, where he was not seen as a grown man still dependent on the strings from his mother’s private purse or from the severe hierarchy of the palace. The Duke has always been as obsessed with sex as a teenager is addicted to breasts. Even after the financier was convicted of sex crimes in Florida, the prince had remained his friend.
The new revelations of the book “The Palace Papers” are therefore not enough to restore the image of Prince Andrew who, for the record, recently concluded a financial agreement with the American Virginia Giuffre, so that she drops the rape charges. and sexual assault he allegedly subjected her to when she was 17.
Due to these accusations, Prince Andrew was deprived of any official role in January and can no longer use his title of Royal Highness. To make matters worse, he also found himself embroiled in a fraud case at the beginning of April, this time with his troubled links with Selman Turk, a businessman accused of embezzlement.