I want you to just close your eyes for a second.
Picture this. You're on the deck of an aircraft
carrier in the middle of the South Atlantic.
It's 1982. Okay. The wind is just screaming.
It is freezing cold. And you can smell the aviation
fuel everywhere. You're 22 years old. Young.
Very young. And you're not just any pilot. You
are, by all accounts, the Queen's favorite son.
You're second in line to the throne. And you
are about to voluntarily climb into a helicopter
to fly a mission where your job, your specific
job, is to be a target. To be the bait. You are
the bait. It's an incredible image, isn't it?
It's almost cinematic. That's the kind of bravery
that... You know, it should buy you a lifetime
of goodwill from the public. A lifetime. Exactly.
So you come home a hero. There are roses on the
deck of the ship. The crowds are roaring your
name. You've got the title, the uniforms, the
public adoration. You are the golden boy. The
absolute peak. Now, let's fast forward 44 years.
The uniforms are gone. The titles have been stripped
away. You aren't even legally called a prince
anymore. Which is just staggering to think about.
You've been served an eviction notice from your
home. Your security detail has been cut. And
you're facing all these legal battles, not as
a royal, but as a private citizen. A guy named
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. That trajectory,
it's it's almost Shakespearean. I mean, it's
a tragedy in the classic sense, although I would
argue it kind of lacks. the tragic hero's redemption
arc at the end. It's a fall from the absolute
zenith of British society to a place of isolation,
of ignominy that really few of us can even comprehend.
And that is who we're talking about today, Andrew
Mountbatten -Windsor. For decades, of course,
the world knew him as Prince Andrew, the Duke
of York. But the man we're looking at now...
Is someone very different. Completely different.
And I want to be really clear from the start.
This is not just going to be a rehash of the
headlines you all saw in 2019 or 2022. We're
not just talking about Jeffrey Epstein. Right.
Because that's the thing. If you only focus on
the end. You completely missed the why. You can't
possibly understand the final downfall in 2025
and 2026 without understanding the entitlement
of the 1980s or the the financial murkiness of
his years as a trade envoy in the 2000s. You
have to connect the dots. You have to connect
the dots between the war hero we just described
and the man who was just recently deemed a national
security risk by UK intelligence. For this deep
dive, we have a massive stack of sources. I mean,
we're talking detailed biographical records,
military service logs from the Falklands, which
are fascinating in their own right. They really
are. We've got government reports on his trade
activities, court filings from both the U .S.
and the U .K., and, of course, the very recent
and, frankly, shocking palace announcements from
late 2025 about his titles and his residences.
And what we're going to see when we lay it all
out is that this wasn't a sudden drop off a cliff.
Not at all. It was a slow, systematic dismantling.
It's a story of, well, privilege, a stunning
lack of judgment, and the gradual erosion of
what we can probably call the royal shield. So
let's unpack this. And to do that, we have to
start at the beginning. We have to understand
the height from which he fell. He was born in
1960. And that date is really significant. You
have to look at the family tree for a second.
Queen Elizabeth II had Charles and Anne, and
then there was this. This gap. A big gap. A 10
-year gap. So Andrew was the first child born
to a reigning monarch in over a century. I think
it was since Queen Victoria's daughter Beatrice
back in 1857. So that sets him apart immediately.
He's the baby of the family, but in a very public
way. He wasn't just another royal baby. He was
kind of a statement. He was the restart of the
family unit after a long pause. And by all accounts,
the parenting style had... Well, it had softened
by then. Charles had a much more disciplined,
maybe even distant upbringing. Very much so.
Andrew was, well, he was indulged. He was the
spare, sure, but he was the charismatic one,
the boisterous one. And he goes to Gordonstoun,
same school as his father and his brother. Charles
famously hated it. He called it coldits and kilts.
But Andrew. Andrew, from what we can tell, he
thrived on the physicality of it. He was a natural
athlete. But. This is where we see the first
little cracks in the personality profile start
to emerge. He got a nickname from his schoolmates
there that I think is incredibly telling. What
was it? The Sniggerer. The Sniggerer. That does
not sound like a compliment. It wasn't. His peers
gave him that label because of his penchant for
off -color jokes. He would apparently laugh way
too hard at things that others found inappropriate
or cruel or just plain awkward. So it points
to a certain... Tone deafness, maybe? Yeah. A
lack of ability to read the room. Or maybe just
an arrogance. Like, I'm the prince, so if I find
it funny, it is funny. That's probably closer
to it. Precisely. And that trait, that inability
to understand how he's being perceived by other
people, that's the thread that you can pull all
the way through his life, right up to that Newsnight
interview 40 years later. But in his 20s, the
media loved him. Before he even joined the military,
he was Randy Andy, the professional playboy.
Oh, he fit the archetype perfectly. He was good
-looking, he was charming, he was dating actresses
like Kustark, he was the action man prince. And
the public, you know, they love a rogue royal,
as long as they stay within certain boundaries.
And then comes 1982. The Falklands War. This
is the moment that just cemented his status.
And honestly, looking back at the logs, I was
surprised. This was not a PR stunt. Not at all.
And this is where you have to give credit where
credit is due. When the war broke out, the British
government was, well, they were absolutely terrified
about Anders' involvement. Of course. You have
the second in line to the throne serving on an
active aircraft carrier, the HMS Invincible.
The cabinet, the actual government, wanted to
move him to a desk job in Whitehall for his own
safety. Because if he gets captured. If he gets
captured or, God forbid, killed, it's a national
catastrophe. It's huge leverage for the Argentine
junta. I mean, the risk was just astronomical.
But his mother, the queen, she stepped in. The
queen was adamant. She insisted that if he was
a serving officer, then he had to serve. She
wouldn't allow him to be wrapped in cotton wool
just because of who he was. So he stayed and
he flew seeking helicopters. OK, so let's get
into the weeds on this decoy mission you mentioned
earlier, because decoy sounds like a polite word
for suicide mission. What exactly was he doing
up there? It's incredibly dangerous work. So
the Argentines were using these French made Exocet
missiles. I've heard of those terrifying. They're
terrifying weapons. They're sea skimming radar
guided missiles that lock on to the biggest target
they can find. And the Invincible, the aircraft
carrier, is a massive metal target. Right. So
the strategy was to fly the helicopters behind.
and slightly above the ship. To make the helicopter
look like the bigger target to the missile's
radar. Exactly. The helicopter creates a large
radar cross section. You are actively trying
to seduce the missile away from the carrier,
which is, you know, if that wasn't people on
it, and towards your helicopter. And if it locks
on. If the missile locks onto you, you have seconds
to pull up, change your profile, and pray the
missile just flies underneath you and crashes
into the sea. That takes a special kind of nerve.
It does. I mean, he witnessed the attack on the
SS Atlantic conveyor, which was hit by an Exocet
and sunk. He was flying casualty evacuation missions,
literally pulling survivors out of the freezing
South Atlantic waters. This was real, visceral,
traumatic stuff. And on top of all that, there
was a specific threat against him personally,
wasn't there? Yes. The historian Andrew Lowney
uncovered this. The Argentine military government
had actually planned an assassination attempt
against him while he was on leave in Mustique
in July of 82. An assassination attempt. It didn't
happen, obviously, but the intelligence services
took it very, very seriously. He was a primary
target for them. So he comes back a legitimate
hero. His commanding officer, Nigel Ward, described
him as an excellent pilot and a very promising
officer. And that hero halo is just crucial to
the whole story. For the British public in the
80s, he was. He was like Captain America. He
had the adrenaline, the bravery, the royal status.
It creates this very powerful shield of public
goodwill. And it takes a lot to start chipping
away at that kind of foundation. But the chipping
did start, and pretty soon after, didn't it?
Let's move on to the marriage. 1986 Sarah Ferguson
The Fergie era. They become the Duke and Duchess
of York. And on paper, you know, it looked great.
She was fun. She was a bit of a breath of fresh
air. She broke the mold of that stiff royal protocol.
But the cracks appeared pretty quickly. Very
quickly. You have to remember, Andrew was still
an active naval officer. So he wasn't home much.
He was away for long, long stretches at sea.
Sarah was left alone in a, you know, a drafty
palace dealing with the media that just turned
on her. They were vicious. They called her the
Duchess of Pork. They criticized her weight,
her fashion. Everything. She was drowning and
her husband wasn't there. And it's while he's
off at sea that this this whole happy unmarried
dynamic really starts to form. They separate
in 1992, which was the Queen's Annis Horribilis,
her horrible year. Right. And then the photos.
The John Bryan photos, August 1992. The toe sucking
photos. Well, technically he was kissing her
toes. But yes, that's how everyone remembers
it. The photo showed her topless on holiday with
her financial advisor, John Bryan. It was a massive
scandal that effectively ended any hope of them
getting back together. But what's so fascinating
here is not the divorce itself, which was finalized
in 1996. It's what happened after. They never
really left each other. Exactly. It's bizarre.
They divorced, but they continued to live together,
first at Sunny Hill Park, then the much grander
Royal Lodge. Ridiculous. They literally called
themselves the happiest unmarried couple in the
world. It's a very strange setup. And this is
where the financial weirdness starts to really
creak into the story, right? Because Sarah Ferguson,
bless her, was, well, she was not great with
money. She was catastrophic with money. I mean,
she was getting into massive, massive debt. bordering
on bankruptcy multiple times over the years.
And Andrew stepped in. He did. In 2011, she actually
described him as her knight on a white charger
who intervened to clear her debts. Now, we have
to pause there and ask a question. How? How?
Andrew is a naval officer, then a trade envoy.
He's well off, sure, but he's not a billionaire.
How is he clearing multi -million pound debts
for his ex -wife? That is the million pound question,
or the multi -million pound question. Where is
that liquidity coming from? And this financial
codependency, this constant need for cash to
prop up her lifestyle on his own, it really seems
to be the root of so many of the bad decisions
that followed. He needed money to maintain a
lifestyle that matched his royal status, not
his actual income. Which sets the stage perfectly
for the next chapter. Yeah. The trade envoy years.
Air Miles, Andy. The nickname that just stuck
to him. It really did. So from 2001 to 2011,
he is the UK's special representative for international
trade and investment, which is basically, you
know, salesman in chief for Great Britain. A
role that, in theory, makes a lot of sense. You
use a royal to open doors for British businesses.
Hello, I'm the Duke of York. Would you like to
buy our jet engines? In theory, yes. But in practice,
it became a magnet for controversy. The scrutiny
over his expenses was intense. There was one
year where they hit 620 ,000 pounds. Wow. And
of that, 465 ,000 pounds was just on travel.
He wasn't flying EasyJet then? No. Private jets,
luxury hotel suites. He treated it like a royal
tour, not a series of business trips. But, you
know, the real problem wasn't even the cost to
the taxpayer. It was the company he was keeping.
This is where the judgment issue becomes glaringly
obvious. Who was he meeting on these trips? While
he wasn't just meeting standard CEOs of respectable
companies, he was meeting Saif al -Islam Gaddafi,
the son of the Libyan dictator. Right. He was
meeting with senior members of the Tunisian regime
right before the Arab Spring Revolution toppled
them. He had frequent meetings, something like
a dozen, with Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan. And
Aliyev is a very controversial figure. To put
it mildly, I mean, Azerbaijan has a terrible
human rights record. Critics at the time were
arguing that Andrew was lending the legitimacy
of the British crown to a regime that was actively
suppressing its own people. And there was the
accusation that he was a cheerleader in chief.
for the arms trade, specifically regarding sales
to Bahrain. Campaigners against the arms trade
were absolutely furious. They argued that by
smoothing the way for these arms deals, he was
in a way complicit in how those weapons might
eventually be used. But beyond the politics of
it all, there were allegations of straight up
personal corruption. And this is where it gets
really murky. We have to talk about Sunny Hill
Park. Because I've looked at the real estate
data from that time. And this deal makes absolutely
no sense. It's baffling. It raises so many red
flags. It's like a parade. So Sunning Hill Park
was the big modern house given to Andrew and
Fergie when they married. They called it South
York, right? Because it looked like something
out of the TV show Dallas. Exactly. A bit gaudy.
So in 2002, he puts it on the market for 12 million
pounds. And it sits there. It rots for five years.
Nobody wants it. The market is flat. The house
is getting dilapidated. Then suddenly in 2007,
it sells for 15 million. Wait, wait. It's been
on the market for five years at 12 millions,
and someone comes in and pays 3 million pounds
over the asking price. Who on earth does that?
Timur Kulibayev, the son -in -law of the then
president of Kazakhstan. Okay, so why? Why would
you pay that much extra? for a house that no
one else wants? That is the question that financial
investigators and journalists have been asking
for years. In anti -money laundering circles,
paying significantly above the market value for
an asset is a classic textbook way to move money.
To disguise a payment. Exactly. A BBD investigation
later linked the funds that were used for that
purchase to a wider money laundering network
and a bribery scheme in Kazakhstan. So the implication
is the extra three million pounds wasn't for
the house itself. The implication, and Andrew
has always denied knowing anything about the
source of the funds, is that it was a transaction
for something else entirely. Access. Influence.
A favor. And this is no one -off. You then have
the fixer accusations. The Daily Mail ran a huge
story about a Greek and Swiss water deal. Yes,
this was a massive story. They alleged, based
on leaked emails, that Andrews stood to make
a £4 million commission for brokering infrastructure
deals in Kazakhstan. A commission for a member
of the royal family who was acting as an official
government trade envoy. That sounds... That has
to be illegal, right? It would certainly be a
massive conflict of interest, at the very least.
A trade envoy is supposed to represent the country,
not their own personal bank account. What did
the palace say? The palace denied it completely,
claimed the emails were forgeries, and they even
tried to get a court injunction to block publication
on privacy grounds. But the story was out there.
The smoke was just getting thicker and thicker
around his finances. And it brings us right back
to that central question. How did he pay for
his life? We have a whole section here on financial
opaqueness. Let's just look at the raw numbers.
Let's do the math. As a retired naval officer,
he had a pension of about 20 ,000 pounds a year.
He also got an annuity from the queen, from her
private funds, of roughly 249 ,000 pounds a year.
Now, that is a lot of money to you and me. Of
course. But he was buying ski chalets in Verbier,
Switzerland, for 13 million pounds. He was driving
top -of -the -line Range Rovers, wearing Patek
Philippe watches, maintaining the lifestyle of
the global ultra -wealthy. The math just does
not add up. So he had to have other sources of
income? He had a... Bank of Friends. A very specific
and very wealthy network of friends. We have
to talk about the connection to David Rowland
and his bank, Bank Haviland. This is a bit complex,
so let's break it down. Please. In 2017, Andrew
takes out a loan of 1 .5 million pounds from
Rowland's bank. Okay, a loan. High net worth
individuals take out loans. Right. But just 11
days later, 11 days, that loan is paid off in
full. Not by Andrew from his salary, but by a
wire transfer of $1 .5 million from a different
company, which was also controlled by the Rowland
family. So he borrows money from Rowland's bank,
and then Rowland's other company pays off the
loan for him. Essentially, yes. The money goes
in a circle. Andrew ends up with the cash benefit
of the loan and the debt just vanishes. In the
corporate world, that looks incredibly suspicious.
It looks like a gift that's been disguised as
a loan, maybe to avoid scrutiny or tax implications.
And this isn't an isolated incident. There's
the Turkish fraud case, the one involving a woman
named Nebahat Izbilin. This one is just bizarre.
She was the wife of a jailed Turkish politician
and she was trying to get her assets out of Turkey.
She transferred 750 ,000 pounds directly to Prince
Andrew. For what? Well, she claimed in court
filings that she was told it was for his assistance
with getting her a passport. She thought she
was buying a passport from a prince. That's what
she alleged. Andrew's team, when the bank flagged
the payment, told them it was a wedding gift
for his daughter, Princess Beatrice. A 750 ,000
pound wedding gift from a woman he barely knew
who was in the middle of a legal crisis. And
Beatrice, by the way, reportedly knew absolutely
nothing about the supposed gift. But here is
the real kicker. Andrew repaid the money. All
of it. But only after her lawyers got involved
and started making noise. Which strongly suggests
he knew he couldn't defend keeping it. Exactly.
Innocent people don't usually rush to repay seven
-figure gifts the moment lawyers start calling.
But the pattern is just so clear. He was monetizing
his position. He was trading access and the perception
of influence for cash. And he was even getting
into crypto. The Pegasus Group tour. Oh, this
is one of the more surreal episodes. This is
June 2019. He gives a private behind -the -scenes
tour of Buckingham Palace to a group of crypto
businessmen. Why? Because they were paying Fergie,
his ex -wife, a large sum of money for brand
ambassadorship. He was acting as the royal tour
guide to help close his ex -wife's business deals.
It's transactional. It's pay -to -play. Using
a royal palace as the backdrop. It's all transactional.
And that mindset, that willingness to blur every
ethical line for cash or to maintain his lifestyle,
that leads us directly to the point of no return.
It leads us to Jeffrey Epstein. This is the darkest
chapter. And I think it's really important to
trace the timeline correctly because Andrew's
defense has so often relied on confusing the
dates. That's right. He met Epstein through Ghislaine
Maxwell back in the 90s. That's been established.
But the critical error, the really unforgivable
judgment call was in 2010. By 2010, Epstein had
already been convicted. He was a registered sex
offender of the United States. Exactly. He had
served jail time. The world knew what he was.
This wasn't some secret. And yet Andrew flies
to New York. He stays at Epstein's mansion. He
is photographed walking in Central Park with
him smiling. His explanation, which came much
later, was that he went there to officially break
off the friendship. It's an explanation that,
for most observers, simply doesn't hold water.
You don't fly across the Atlantic and stay in
a man's house for several days just to say goodbye.
You send an email. You make a phone call. The
visit implies a continued, comfortable relationship.
And then, of course, come the direct allegations
from Virginia Giuffre. She claimed she was trafficked
by Epstein and forced to have sexual encounters
with Prince Andrew in London, New York, and on
Epstein's private island in the U .S. Virgin
Islands. And we have the photograph, the infamous
one. Andrew with his arm around a teenage Virginia
Giuffre's waist, with Ghislaine Maxwell smiling
in the background. It was reportedly taken inside
Maxwell's London home. Andrew's supporters have
tried for years to claim it's faked. They've
said his fingers look too chubby or the lighting
is wrong. But no credible forensic analysis has
ever definitively proven it to be a fake. It
remains this piece of damning visual evidence
at the center of the story. So the pressure is
just building and building. And in November 2019,
Andrew decides he's going to fix it all. He sits
down with Emily Maitlis for BBC Newsnight. A
decision that will go down in history as perhaps
the single worst public relations move ever made
by a public figure. He genuinely thought he could
charm his way out of it. He thought, I'm the
prince of the realm, I can explain this. And
instead of an explanation, we got, I don't sweat.
The alibis were, well, they were memorable. He
claimed he couldn't have been sweating on the
dance floor at the Tramp nightclub in 2001, as
Giuffre alleged, because he had a condition.
He said he had an adrenaline overdose during
the Falklands War that left him unable to perspire.
Which is medically... Dubious, to say the least.
Highly dubious. And then there was the Pizza
Express defense. He claimed he couldn't possibly
have been with Giuffre on the specific night
in London because he had taken his daughter to
a children's party at a Pizza Express in Woking.
The phrase, I was at Pizza Express in Woking,
became a national punchline overnight. But beyond
the memes, what was the real damage from that
interview? The real damage was his total shocking
lack of empathy. For an hour, he talked about
Jeffrey Epstein, he talked about himself, he
talked about his honor. He barely mentioned the
victims. He showed no regret for the friendship,
other than to say it was unbecoming for a royal.
The public saw a man who was arrogant, completely
out of touch, and... utterly refusing to take
any accountability. And the fallout was instant.
It was immediate. Within days, the queen had
to suspend him from all public duties. Charities
and businesses he was a patron of dropped him
like a stone. The royal shield completely shattered
in that one hour. But the legal battle, that
dragged on for a couple more years. Until 2022.
That's right. Virginia Giuffre filed a civil
lawsuit against him in the U .S. Andrew's legal
team tried everything to get it dismissed. They
failed. And facing the prospect of a public jury
trial, he settled. For a lot of money. A massive
sum. It was never officially confirmed, but reports
put it at over 12 million pounds, which included
a substantial donation to her charity for victims
of trafficking. He admitted no liability, but
he also didn't get the chance to clear his name
in court, which he had promised to do. Which
brings us to the final act, the dismantling.
This is the period from 2022 to late 2025 where
he is slowly and systematically erased from public
life. It started with the military affiliations.
His mother, the queen, who had been his biggest
supporter and protector his whole life, had to
be the one to do it. In January 2022, she removed
his military titles and his royal patronages.
He also had to agree to stop using his royal
highness in any public capacity. But legally
at that point, he was still a prince. He was
still the Duke of York. He was. Until late 2025.
This is where the story enters its most recent
and most dramatic phase. After the queen's death,
King Charles III took a much, much harder line
than his mother ever did. In November 2025, letters
patent were issued by the king. This was the
final blow, wasn't it? It was the final legal
blow. The formal removal of the title prince
and the style of royal highness by a legal act
of the sovereign. He's now, officially and legally,
just Andrew Mountbatten -Windsor. This is completely
unprecedented for a king's own brother. But at
the same time, he lost the lease on Royal Lodge.
The whole Royal Lodge saga is a perfect example
of his denial. He had the 75 -year lease on a
massive 30 -room mansion in Windsor Great Park.
But he couldn't afford the upkeep. The paint
was peeling. There was damp. Exactly. The place
was falling apart. King Charles wanted him out
into something smaller and cheaper like Frogmore
Cottage. Andrew refused. He dug his heels in
for months. But in late 2025, he finally had
to cave. He was served formal notice to vacate.
He had to surrender the lease. And crucially,
the Crown Estate made a point of clarifying that
he wouldn't get any compensation for the millions
he'd spent on renovations because of the dilapidations,
which is a polite way of saying he let the place
rot. So he's moved to, where is it, Marsh Farm?
Or a similar property on the Sandringham estate
in Norfolk. The point is, it's a private home.
Much smaller. Far more isolated. Out of the public
eye. And as security. Gone. The taxpayer -funded
police protection was removed. For a while, Charles
was paying for private security out of his own
pocket, but reports from late 2024 and 2025 suggest
that even that funding was cut off. He is, for
all intents and purposes, on his own. But wait,
it gets even more complicated. Just as he's being
pushed into total obscurity, we get this bizarre
story about a Chinese spy connection. This is
the sting in the tail. In late 2024 and throughout
2025, reports started to emerge about his relationship
with a Chinese businessman named Chris Yang.
And who was Chris Yang? He was a businessman
Andrew had been inviting to royal events, like
pitch at palace. But it turns out that British
intelligence, MI5, had identified him as being
involved in covert activity for the Chinese Communist
Party. He was actually barred from entering the
UK. And Andrew was also meeting with Kai Qi,
a very senior Chinese official. A very high ranking
official. Yes. Effectively, Xi Jinping's chief
of staff. Andrew met him in both London and Beijing.
And the concern from UK intelligence, and they
were explicit about this in leaked reports, was
that Andrew now posed a potential national security
risk. Why? Because he knows state secrets. Not
necessarily. It's because of his vulnerability.
He's desperate for money. He's desperate for
irrelevance. He feels abandoned. That makes him
a prime target for recruitment or manipulation
by foreign intelligence services. It's the classic
honey trap or financial trap scenario. If you
have a broke, disgraced royal who feels abandoned
by his family and his country, that is a potential
asset you can exploit. And just when you think
the story can't possibly get any worse, January
2026 rolls around. A new allegation. Another
Epstein victim came forward through her lawyer
claiming a sexual encounter took place at Royal
Lodge in 2010. 2010. That's remarkably late in
the timeline, much later than the Jufri allegations.
It is. And it reinforces the idea that this wasn't
just some youthful indiscretion in the early
2000s. The claim alleges she was even shown around
Buckingham Palace and served tea by staff. It
paints this picture of total impunity right up
until the end. So where did that leave him now?
He's had to surrender his gun license. They've
literally renamed Prince Andrew Way in a town
in Northern Ireland. His banner as a Knight of
the Garter is gone from St. George's Chapel.
He is a man who has been erased. He exists in
this strange limbo. He is still the king's brother,
a biological fact, but he is a pariah. He has
the surname Mountbatten -Windsor, but he has
no role, no protection, and by all accounts,
very few friends left. It is a staggering, staggering
collapse. Yeah. From the balcony of Buckingham
Palace to a farmhouse in Norfolk, from the hero
of the Falklands War to a potential national
security risk. And the question that hangs over
all of it is, how much of this was the system
protecting him for too long? and how much of
it was his own bottomless hubris? I think that's
the takeaway, isn't it? The royal shield is an
incredibly powerful thing. It protected him from
the consequences of his spending, his questionable
associations, and his behavior for 40 years.
But in the end, it couldn't protect him from
the truth. Or maybe just from the changing standards
of the world. What passed in the 80s and 90s,
that Randy Andy playboy persona, it just looks
very, very different through the lens of the
2020s. So here is a final thought to leave you
with. We know about the trade envoy scandals
that have been reported. We know about the Epstein
links. We know about the eviction. But the actual
files, the official foreign office documents
that detail all of his trade trips. They are
locked. Sealed until the year 2065. 2065. Yeah.
We will likely both be gone by then. Andrew certainly
will be. You have to ask yourself, what is in
those files? If what we know now is this damaging
the bribery allegations, the friendships with
dictators, what on earth is hidden in those government
archives that justified sealing them for nearly
a century? And that is the ghost that will haunt
the legacy of the House of York for decades to
come. Thanks for listening to this deep dive.
We'll be back next time with another story from
the archives.