After seven decades of waiting in the shadow of Britain’s longest-reigning sovereign, King Charles III is learning first-hand a timeless Shakespearean warning — “heavy is the head that wears the crown.”
It has been a rough reign for the King, whose time on the throne has been defined by illness, heartbreak, and royal scandal, culminating in the arrest of his brother on Thursday.
It was Charles who demoted his younger brother — His Royal Highness Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Earl of Inverness, and Baron Killyleagh — to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
The monarch stripped Andrew of his titles, his knighthoods, his royal accommodations, and even his military medals, doing everything he could to put distance between “Randy Andy” and the rest of the Royal Family.
Tim Stanley, a historian and columnist for the U.K.’s Telegraph, told the Washington Examiner: “Charles inherited his throne late in life and in poor health, yet he’s arguably handled Andrew firmly and with greater toughness than the late Queen did.
“Charles stripped Andrew of his home and titles. He’s been uninvited from the annual Christmas party. And the family has deployed statements of sympathy for the victims to suggest distance from Mountbatten-Windsor.
“As a prince, Charles was sometimes perceived as a dreamer who chats to plants. As King, he’s been pretty decisive. Arguably, he’s not doing it for himself but to clean house for the next generation. Polling indicates that William and Kate are more popular than Charles, who remains somewhat tainted by his divorce from Diana.”
Despite Charles’s decisive action, it was left to Thames Valley police to deliver the coup de grâce on Thursday when they unceremoniously identified the former playboy prince as a “man in his sixties from Norfolk” after his arrest under “suspicion of misconduct in public office.”
Monarchs and their relatives have been “arrested” in the past, but only back when that meant being chained up by their uncle in the Tower of London. No royal, former or otherwise, has ever had to suffer the thoroughly modern indignity of riding in the back of a squad car — a new low point for the House of Windsor.
King Charles rose to the occasion with a royal communique as milquetoast and dispassionate as anything his much-beloved mother, Queen Elizabeth II, had written.
The sovereign expressed, after receiving news that his brother was being handcuffed for his alleged leaking of sensitive state information to a convicted sex offender, that he is filled with the “deepest concern.”
“It’s been very unfortunate for King Charles that his reign, for which he waited so long, has coincided with the great disgrace and the reckoning following from [Jeffrey] Epstein’s relationships with various people — in particular, Peter Mandelson and the former Prince Andrew,” Rachel Johnson, journalist and sister of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, told the Washington Examiner. “It’s hard to see where it ends. It really is.”
Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York and Andrew’s ex-wife, is also implicated after emails records show she maintained a close relationship with the financier following his conviction. She referred to him as her “pillar” and offered to manage his estates, occasionally opening up about her feelings of depression and isolation to him.
In one email exchange from 2011, Epstein complained about a London Evening Standard story that called him a pedophile and how Ferguson had told the newspaper she had “deep regret” about their association. Ferguson responded that she “did not” and “would not” call him a “P.” She insisted instead that she was simply trying to “protect [her] own brand.”
She has not been arrested on any criminal charges, but her charity, Sarah’s Trust, was forced to shut down following the revelations.
House in order
It’s almost enough to make one forget that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, continue to wage their yearslong war to stay in the spotlight across the Atlantic.
Charles has been almost entirely mute about the couple as they’ve offered tell-all after tell-all about the racist attitudes behind palace walls, gotten into bed with Netflix, and shared videos of the duchess twerking herself into labor at the hospital.
Excerpts from a forthcoming book about the Sussexes assert that the King made every effort to find an official position where Harry and Meghan could remain royals while still maintaining some distance from the family, including the prince becoming governor-general of Canada.
“We already knew they were intent on signing commercial deals and that just wasn’t going to work within the model,” a senior palace source reportedly told author and Daily Mirror royal editor Russell Myers. “So we kept saying to them, ‘How do you want this to work? Do you actually have a tangible plan that could help us?’, but we got nothing in return.”
Stanley believes the Epstein scandal “forces a rethink” on Harry and Meghan.
“We called Megxit ‘historic’, but it’s small fry compared to the arrest of a royal,” Stanley told the Washington Examiner. “More importantly, the things they were accused of – self-indulgence, sharing private conversations – are utterly benign compared with alleged insider trading or trafficking kids for sex. (All denied by Andrew).
“Some of us are asking, was it fair to exclude Harry and Meghan from royal life when Andrew was tolerated for so long – too long – by the Palace? They have every right to be angry at the double standard.”
When Charles was the Prince of Wales, he was seen as something of a disruptor in Buckingham Palace. Much ink was spilled about his own extra-marital liaisons, quirky behaviors, and modernist attitudes despite being the heir apparent to a monarchy believed to have been mandated by God.
Perhaps that persona was easier to maintain when it was Queen Elizabeth, the empress of tradition and duty, holding the family together.
Or maybe illness in old age has given the aging monarch a new perspective.
Charles announced in February 2024 that he had been diagnosed with the early stages of cancer, leading him to briefly postpone his public-facing duties. Not even a month later, Buckingham Palace announced that Princess Catherine, his daughter-in-law through Prince William, was also diagnosed with the disease.
Catherine is by all accounts among the king’s most cherished family members, and some royal observers speculate that she may in some ways be closer to him than Prince William.
At the end of that dreadful year, King Charles offered a holiday address in which he did not shy away from his feelings of suffering.
“All of us go through some form of suffering at some stage in our lives, be it mental or physical,” the King said in his 2024 Christmas speech. “The degree to which we help one another — and draw support from each other, be we people of Faith or of none — is a measure of our civilization as Nations. This is what continually impresses me, as my Family and I meet with, and listen to, those who dedicate their lives to helping others.”
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Walter Bagehot, a 19th-century journalist and historian who remains widely lauded for his insights into British social order, once wrote that “above all things our royalty is to be reverenced.”
“If you begin to poke about it, you cannot reverence it. Its mystery is its life,” Bagehot contended. “We must not let in daylight upon magic.”
Knives out
Charles is not blameless in letting the curtains be pulled and sunlight let into the palace from his messy divorce with Princess Diana to TamponGate. But as he has aged, he seems to have learned there was wisdom in the silent endurance of his mother and other monarchs that came before him.
In the wake of his brother’s arrest, the usual suspects have once again begun banging the war drums of republicanism, demanding an end to hereditary privilege and royalty. These fringe cries for the United Kingdom to become a “United Republic” existed even when the Royal Family had been on its best behavior, but such an untoward scandal has given them red meat.
“It’s far too soon to say it’s the end of the monarchy. It’s far too soon to say this is the end of the reign of King Charles,” Johnson told the Washington Examiner. “Republicans are out, you know, saying ‘we need to have a republic,’ but nobody thinks there’s a better alternative to what we’ve got.”
The Crown remains the foundational bedrock of British society and the source of inestimable value for tourism and soft power. The armed forces are constitutionally bound to the king, and the courts pass judgment in his name. Even the police who arrested his brother operate under His Majesty’s government.
The monarchy isn’t going anywhere.
But perhaps if King Charles had it his way, the world would just forget about them for a while as he tries to get his house in order.
