For the last 15 years, the royal formerly known as Prince Andrew has faced scrutiny over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, but as new emails and documents emerge, the fallout has intensified. King Charles III made the decision to strip his brother of his titles, honors, and style late last month, renaming him Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Now the institutions Andrew worked with during his decades as a senior royal are trying to figure out how to remove his ceremonial plaques from their walls.
From the large to the small, these organizations are doing their best to erase any trace of the disgraced royal from their public spaces.
He Lost His Final Military Role
Despite losing most of his royal military titles in 2022, when he settled a lawsuit with accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre in which Andrew rejected any claim of wrongdoing and accepted no liability, news broke that Andrew still held on to one final role as honorary Vice Admiral in the Royal Navy. But on November 5, Secretary of Defence John Healey announced that the Royal Navy was trying to remove that title as well. “We’ve had Andrew surrender the honorary positions he’s had throughout the military, and—guided again by the king—we are working now to remove that last remaining title of Vice Admiral that he has,” Healey told the BBC. “This is a move that’s right, it’s a move the King has indicated we should take and we’re working on that at the moment.”
He Was Removed From Plaques on the Falkland Islands
Earlier this month, there was a reprieve when the Ministry of Defence announced that Andrew would be allowed to keep the medals he earned when he served in the Falklands War in 1982. But the Falkland Islands themselves are not so fond of the association. In the decades since he made his name as a military hero in the small territory off the coast of Argentina, he made multiple visits to celebrate the ties between the UK and the land it fought to defend. But in 2022, after Andrew settled out of court with Giuffre, his plaque was taken down from King Edward VII Memorial Hospital in Stanley, the islands’ capital city.
According to the Daily Express, all signs of Andrew’s name have now been erased from the islands following this year’s developments. A plaque with his name was removed from the Mount Pleasant Airport, which he opened in 2002, and another was taken down from a wildlife center run by his former patronage, the Falklands Conservation trust. “He was removed as patron and the plaque at the field centre has gone,” a staff member said, as reported by the Daily Mirror. His plaque at the center was also scrapped, and a spokesperson confirmed that Andrew is “no longer connected to our school.”
Town Councils Across the UK Regret Their One-Time Exuberance
When the king announced that Andrew would no longer be a prince, town councils across the UK had to weigh what to do with the streets named in his honor. The New York Times documented the debate in Heldeson, a village in eastern England that adopted the street name “Prince Andrew” when he was born in 1960. (He was the first child born to a sitting monarch in more than 100 years, which caused a fair degree of media excitement at the time.)
According to one town councillor who spoke to the newspaper, the change wouldn’t be an easy one to accomplish in the small town of 11,000 residents. “It would be very difficult to obtain a consensus of all residents,” Shelagh Gurney told the Times. “My emails clearly indicate that this would not be achieved.”
