Queen Elizabeth Allegedly Wanted Andrew ‘To Be More Discreet’ and It Didn't End Well
Royal author David Cannadine believes Queen Elizabeth's indulgence fostered Andrew's sense of entitlement and inflated self-view.
For years, the public believed wealth, power, and privilege worked in Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's favor, shielding him from accountability, until the release of the Epstein files. What many do not realize is that, before all of this, a quiet force, known for her stoic sense of duty, allegedly cautioned him to keep his personal life more discreet. And who would that be? According to royal author David Cannadine, it was the late Queen Elizabeth, whose excessive pampering of her son is often blamed for the serious consequences he faces today.
Cannadine's new book, Queen Elizabeth II: A Concise Biography of an Exceptional Sovereign, notes that the late monarch often looked the other way when Mountbatten-Windsor engaged in less-than-pleasant activities. He wrote, "There was nothing The Queen could do…to persuade Prince Andrew to be more discreet." As for her alleged lack of control over her second son, the royal author explained, "The Queen indulged her two younger sons [ex-Prince Andrew and Prince Edward] too much," following King Charles's complaints that she had been too distant.
Unfortunately, Cannadine claimed that the Queen's decision to overly 'indulge' in Mountbatten-Windsor backfired. And the result of it was "that [ex-]Prince Andrew acquired an excessive sense of entitlement and an exaggerated opinion of his own abilities, which would lead to serious misjudgments that would eventually compel him to withdraw from public life." He also noted that, barring Mountbatten-Windsor's controversial friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, he had developed an unappealing reputation early on. He added, "Andrew fully availed himself of the more relaxed moral climate of the early 1980s, the press nicknamed him 'Randy Andy,' and he had a succession of girlfriends, of whom the most famous was the extraordinarily named Koo Stark..."
But that's not all, as various royal authors have questioned whether the Queen's alleged pampering of Mountbatten-Windsor was responsible for his behavior today. In that vein, royal commentator Tina Brown told The New York Times podcast The Interview, "She [Elizabeth] was the one who protected him [Andrew], so, unfortunately, it made him worse." She also believed that Mountbatten Windsor's fall from grace, if it ever existed, was enabled over decades. "The Queen was there for 70 years, right? The hagiography around the Queen is intense, you know? I mean, you're not allowed to ever criticize the Queen."
Similarly, in a blistering New York Times article, royal correspondent Sarah Lyall wrote that while the late Queen protected Mountbatten-Windsor his whole life, Charles was not going to do the same. She penned, "He [Andrew] would get no such treatment from King Charles III, who has responded to each new unsavory turn in his brother's scandal by taking away more of the trappings of his royal life — money, status, and titles." To argue her point, she stressed that during the Queen's funeral, the King allowed the former Prince to attend but forbade him from wearing his military uniform.
