Royal Family News: Did Being A “Spare” Drive Prince Andrew To Live A Controversy Plagued Life?

British royal family news reveals that the regal clan is very different than most families, but in one way very much the same: they are immune to scandal. While Harry continues to lob “truth bombs” in an infantile effort to undermine the monarchy he rejected, there is another royal with the capacity to do much greater damage to the institution.

Prince Andrew is facing a sexual assault civil case brought against him in New York. A related case concerning “pimp” Ghislaine Maxwell is ongoing in NYC and he has been prominently named in it even though it just kicked off this past week.

Royal Family News – Prince Andrew Is The Subject Of A Lawsuit

How did Andrew, who enjoyed a gilded life as the child of the UK’s longest reigning monarch, get to this point in his life?

Since 2019 Andrew has been in the headlines due to his acquaintance with the dead convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his “pimp” Maxwell. Epstein was in prison when he hanged himself and Maxwell is now facing the court with charges of being an accomplice to his trafficking of minors. How does Prince Andrew fit into this sordid scheme?

He is alleged to be one of the men Maxwell and Epstein provided underage girls to for the purpose of sexual relations. Andrew has denied any involvement in the pair’s seedy dealings. But has yet to account for a picture of him and Maxwell, with his arm around a young woman’s bare torso.

That woman is Virginia Roberts Giuffre and she is behind the civil case against him.

Royal Family News – Virginia Roberts Giuffre Is Suing Andrew

Even before this Andrew was the subject of controversy. The man nicknamed “Randy Andy” saw his marriage to royal rebel Sarah Ferguson explode in 1992 and his popularity has taken hit after hit as shown in YouGov polls. Due to his perceived toxicity he has been mothballed on royal social media and forbidden from representing the queen at public engagements..

How to explain the downfall of Andrew? Historian Robert Lacey thinks his status as a spare versus his brother Charles’ status as the heir could have something to do with his life’s choices.

According to Lacey, “Elizabeth reportedly didn’t (and still doesn’t) have a particularly close relationship with her first son, Charles, as she spent the bulk of his childhood serving as the monarch of her country … Cue Andrew, who was born 12 years after Charles and who served as a sort of do-over for the queen.” He asserts that by he time he was born the queen was a, “warmer and more flexible,” parent, and by extension more permissive?

“Early in the 1960s, Her Majesty decided that she had done her duty by her country, and took the best part of 18 months off work to produce and enjoy her ‘second family,’ the young princes Andrew and Edward, born in 1960 and 1964 respectively,” Lacey said.

Could Andrew’s current woes be down to something as simple as a radically different parenting style than that which his two older siblings experienced? It’s a compelling argument, but how then to explain the fact that Edward’s reputation is the exact opposite of Andrew’s?

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