She has forgiven her second – and, many say, favourite – son over years’ worth of scandals, but Prince Andrew allowing alleged sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey to mock his mum and dad on their own historic thrones is the final straw for Her Majesty.
WATCH: Virginia Roberts says Prince Andrew sweats like ‘it’s raining’
The damning picture of the disgraced pair sitting on the Queen and Prince Philip’s coronation thrones in a restricted area of Buckingham Palace was released by The Telegraph in the UK earlier this month.
The photo, which was taken when Spacey and Maxwell were guests of Prince Andrew’s and shows them apparently attempting royal waves, has left the 94-year-old monarch “aghast”.
“She has already stripped Andrew of his public royal role, banned him from representing the crown, and drastically cut his allowance over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein,” says a source.
The source continues: “The Queen was always reticent to come down too hard on Andrew because of how it might affect his daughters Beatrice and Eugenie, who she is very fond of, but she’s starting to see Charles and William’s side of things. The longer it goes without drastic punishment for Andrew, the more it seems like she’s letting him get away with it.”
Prince Andrew might think he’s had a rough trot this year, with his disastrous Newsnight interview about his former friend and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein seeing him booted from any official role in the royal family.
But it might be about to get a whole lot worse, with the recent arrest of Epstein’s ex-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, reportedly leaving the Duke feeling “nervous”, according to a US magazine.
Andrew previously claimed that Ghislaine was a “key element” in his friendship with Epstein, and according to The Sun, she is thought to have introduced the royal to Epstein victim Virginia Roberts.
“It will surprise exactly no-one if Ghislaine slithers out of this by coughing up other names and details of Jeffrey’s crimes, and his associates,” a source previously claimed.
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