Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor: Former prince who was banished from monarchy

Andrew is the second son of the late Queen but was stripped of his Duke of York and prince title by his brother the King (Kirsty Wigglesworth/PA)

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the royal family’s most controversial figure, was banished from the monarchy in disgrace and forced to step down from public life amid a damaging sexual assault scandal.

A friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, a car-crash television interview and a civil sex abuse case settled with a multimillion-pound payout all led to his dramatic downfall.

He was stripped of his prince and Duke of York titles by his own brother the King in 2025, as the Epstein scandal showed no sign of abating.

Andrew at the coronation of his brother the King (Kirsty Wigglesworth/PA)

Now on his 66th birthday, Andrew – who remains eighth in line to the British throne – has become the first senior member of the House of Windsor to be arrested.

Thames Valley Police previously said the force was reviewing allegations that a woman was trafficked to the UK by Epstein to have a sexual encounter with Andrew, and claims he shared sensitive information with the paedophile while serving as the UK’s trade envoy.

As a young man, the late Queen Elizabeth’s second son was the “Playboy Prince” who was praised for serving in the Falklands War, returning home a hero.

He was linked to a string of beautiful women, earning himself the nickname “Randy Andy” in the process.

He married and divorced the bubbly, flame-haired Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson, who herself has generated some of the most humiliating royal scandals, and they had two daughters, princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.

The pair had remained close with Sarah previously supporting him amid the Epstein scandal, referring to him as her “bestest friend”, and living with him for years at his former home Royal Lodge.

Andrew Albert Christian Edward, the third child and second son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip was born at Buckingham Palace on February 19 1960 – becoming the spare to the heir.

Queen Elizabeth II holding baby Prince Andrew during an outing in the grounds at Balmoral, Scotland, in 1960 (PA)

He arrived after a gap of almost 10 years between him and Princess Anne and became the first child to be born to a reigning monarch since Queen Victoria’s last, Princess Beatrice, in 1857.

An uncomplicated, boisterous child, he was said to be the Queen’s favourite.

At Gordonstoun school in Scotland, he acquired a reputation for being “a man with a big bottom who laughed at his own jokes”.

At 22, Andrew saw active service as a Royal Navy Sea King helicopter pilot in the Falklands War. His service included flying his helicopter as a decoy target, trying to divert deadly Exocet missiles away from British ships.

The then-Prince Andrew at Port Stanley as a helicopter pilot with HMS Invincible in 1982 (Martin Cleaver/PA)

After his divorce, he was spotted cavorting with topless women on holiday in Thailand and attended a “hooker and pimps” party with Robert Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine Maxwell – now a convicted sex trafficker – in the US.

After serving for 22 years in the Royal Navy, Andrew became the UK’s special representative for international trade and investment.

His 10-year stint in the role generated a great deal of controversy.

As a roving ambassador, one of his first tasks was a post-September 11 trip to New York, but Andrew was criticised for attending a party during his stay.

He was dubbed Air Miles Andy amid criticism of his globe-trotting. He was accused of over-using helicopters at taxpayers’ expense, in particular to attend golf-related dinners as a member of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.

The duke also faced questions over his connections to politicians in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tunisia, Libya and Turkmenistan.

Andrew and Sarah on their wedding day in 1986 (PA)

His judgment was questioned after he held meetings with Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saif, and when he entertained the son-in-law of Tunisia’s ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali at Buckingham Palace.

His relations with Timor Kulibayev, son-in-law of the president of Kazakhstan, were also scrutinised after Mr Kulibayev purchased the duke’s Sunninghill Park home for £3m more than its £12 million asking price in 2007.

In November 2010 a secret cable published on the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks revealed a US ambassador wrote that the Duke of York spoke “cockily” during an official engagement, leading a discussion that “verged on the rude”.

Tatiana Gfoeller, Washington’s ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, also said Andrew criticised the Serious Fraud Office investigation of an arms deal between British Aerospace and Saudi Arabia, and accused Guardian journalists of “poking their noses everywhere” for investigating the deal.

Following the WikiLeaks revelations, Simon Wilson – Britain’s deputy head of mission in Bahrain from 2001 to 2005 – wrote in the Daily Mail that Andrew was “more commonly known among the British diplomatic community in the Gulf as HBH: His Buffoon Highness”.

Then then-duke on a visit to Royal Naval Air Station Yeovilton in Somerset in 2015 (Ben Birchall/PA)

There were also long-running complaints about the lavish nature of his official foreign trips.

In 2011, it emerged he was friends with financier Epstein, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2008 for soliciting a minor for prostitution.

Pictures surfaced of Andrew with his arm around Virginia Giuffre, who was trafficked by Epstein when he employed her as a masseuse but exploited her while a teenage minor.

Andrew was also shown walking in New York’s Central Park with Epstein in December 2010, a year after Epstein’s release from prison, and this led him to quit his role as a trade envoy.

Tech-savvy Andrew, who was the first member of the royal family to have his own official Twitter account under his own name, focused on his Pitch@Palace work encouraging young entrepreneurs to embrace technology start-ups, launching a range of initiatives to inspire youth innovators.

Andrew speaking during a Pitch@Palace event in 2018 (John Stillwell/PA)

Then in 2015, while enjoying a new year skiing holiday with his family, Andrew was named in US court documents as having had sex with a 17-year-old three times between 1999 and 2002 in London, New York and on Jeffrey Epstein’s private Caribbean island when the girl was still a minor under US law.

She alleged she was “procured” for Andrew by Epstein, whom she accused of using her as a “sex slave”.

She was identified in reports as Virginia Giuffre – the girl with whom the duke had been pictured.

Andrew vehemently denied the allegation.

His ex-wife Sarah backed him and his daughters rallied round as he vowed to push ahead with his work.

In April 2015, a US federal judge ordered the claims to be struck from civil court records as the long-running lawsuit against Epstein carried on.

The then-Duke of York, Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell (US Department of Justice/PA)

But his association with Epstein hit the headlines once again in 2019, amid the continued investigations into Epstein, who killed himself in prison in August while awaiting trial on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.

Andrew’s so called “car crash” Newsnight appearance was intended to draw a line under the matter.

In it he claimed to have never met Ms Giuffre and that a photo of them together could be a fake.

Ms Giuffre, who died by suicide last year, claimed she danced with Andrew in Tramp nightclub, adding he was “the most hideous dancer I’ve ever seen in my life” and “his sweat was… raining basically everywhere”.

In his interview, Andrew insisted he had a medical condition in 2001, after suffering an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when he was shot at, that meant he did not sweat.

The then-Duke of York speaking about his links to Jeffrey Epstein in an interview with BBC Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis (Mark Harrison/BBC/PA)

He also said the alleged encounter with Ms Giuffre did not happen and he spent the day with his daughter, Princess Beatrice, taking her to Pizza Express in Woking for a party.

The then-duke stepped back from royal duties amid the ensuing furore after failing to show remorse for his close ties to Epstein and display any sympathy for the sex offender’s victims.

Ms Giuffre launched a civil sexual assault case, and the Queen moved to strip her son of his honorary military titles, including Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, and forbid him from using his birthright HRH style.

Andrew settled the legal action in 2022, paying Ms Giuffre a reported 12 million dollars without admission of guilt, despite claiming he had never met her.

The then-duke was said to have then still harboured hopes of wrangling a return to national life.

Queen Elizabeth II and Andrew arriving at a Service of Thanksgiving for the life of the Duke of Edinburgh together in 2022 (Richard Pohle/The Times/PA)

He accompanied his mother to the public memorial service for his father in 2022, and attended the King’s coronation in 2023.

Andrew hit the headlines again in 2024 when a High Court hearing revealed that alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo, who was banned from the UK, had been his “close” confidant.

Mr Yang, founder-partner of the Chinese arm of the duke’s Pitch@Palace initiative, had visited the Palace twice and entered other royal residences.

Meanwhile, the Epstein allegations have persisted.

In 2025, it emerged Andrew had emailed Epstein in 2011 after he had already been jailed, telling him “We’re in this together” – three months after the then-duke insisted he had broken off all contact.

The posthumous memoirs of the late Ms Giuffre increased the pressure.

Andrew agreed to stop using his Duke of York title and remaining honours in October last year, but the King was finally moved to act, expressing support for victims of abuse and sensationally stripping Andrew of both his dukedom and title of prince for “serious lapses of judgment”.

Andrew and the Prince of Wales leave after the Requiem Mass service for the Duchess of Kent in September (Jordan Pettitt/PA)

The former prince became known as simply Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and the so-called siege of Royal Lodge, where Andrew had paid just a peppercorn rent on the Crown Estate property for decades, ended with him decamping to live on the King’s private Sandringham estate, with an annual stipend provided by Charles.

The release of millions of pages of files by the US Department of Justice relating to Epstein in recent weeks sparked a fresh round of allegations against Andrew.

They ranged from claims a second woman was sent to the UK by Epstein for a sexual encounter with Andrew, that the former prince and Epstein asked an exotic dancer for a threesome in the latter’s Florida home, and that Andrew shared confidential reports of official visits to Hong Kong, Vietnam and Singapore in his role as the UK’s trade envoy.

Andrew has denied any wrongdoing over his Epstein links but has not directly responded to recent claims.