Prince Andrew has been the elephant in the room when it comes to our Worst Royals series. After all, while the other members of his family have generated controversy, offense and been caught in embarrassing situations, none of them have done anything remotely as nauseating as “Randy Andy” (barf).
So let’s get this humanoid sack of crap in the Worst Royals hot seat and dissect his many, many horrible actions over the years. If I were you I’d get your hazmat suit on and zip it up tight, as things are about to get gross.
1. Cruelty to animals
Andrew didn’t turn bad in later life, he was awful from the word go. Royal writer Ingrid Seward gave an oversight of Andrew as a child, and her description makes him sound more like a future serial killer than a prince.
According to her, Andrew would get his kicks by kicking the family’s dogs. We’re going to presume this means the Queen’s hunting dogs, as the idea of him kicking a corgi in the face is just too horrible to picture.
Andrew’s sadism didn’t stop there, as he was known for “swiping at the legs of the horses” of the Royal guards. In one instance his animal cruelty went too far, as “two grooms picked him up, threw him in a dung heap, and shoveled manure all over him”. He deserved worse.
Wrongdoing rating: 7/10
2. Abusive to Royal staff
Naturally, Andrew is also horrible to human beings. In 2019 former royal aide told The Sun that he treats his staff in a “shocking, appalling” manner. Apparently when he’s in a bad mood – which is often – he’ll simply throw something on the floor and demand whoever’s closest “f**king pick it up!”
This does occasionally have consequences. Andrew once infuriated a footman to such a degree that he received a punch to the face, leaving him sprawled on the ground with a black eye. The sniveling Prince ran to his Mummy to tell and the footman promptly offered to resign. The Queen sided with the footman and, rightly, he received no punishment.
More recently he’s been so abusive to staff that when Charles heard he was “mortified” and demanded Andrew apologize.
Wrongdoing rating: 7/10
3. Humiliated his wife
Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’s marriage was typically disastrous for the Windsor family and inevitably ended in divorce. But, as you can probably predict, this animal-abusing, tyrannical monster wasn’t especially nice to his wife.
After their divorce, Sarah appears to have become reliant on Andrew for money and he bailed her out of debt (don’t think of this as a plus point for Andy, the money came from Jeffrey Epstein). So how does he treat his ex-wife?
Tina Brown’s book The Palace Papers recalls an incident in which a U.S. media executive was having lunch with Sarah when Andrew entered the room and said “What are you doing with this fat cow?” The executive’s response was to be “stunned at his level of sadism. I thought, ‘What an a**hole.’ She has to sing for her supper. She’s afraid of him.”
If this is how he’ll speak to her in front of people we shudder to think what he’s saying in private.
Wrongdoing rating: 6/10
4. Casually drops the N-word
In 2012 Rohan Silva, then an aide to British Prime Minister David Cameron, visited Buckingham Palace to discuss Andrew’s role as a trade envoy (specifically that he wasn’t doing much). Silva said that Andrew responded to his queries with the comment: “Well, if you’ll pardon the expression, that really is the [N-word] in the woodpile”.
Uh, no, we’re not going to pardon that expression. Buckingham Palace denied he said it but Silva was adamant, saying he “walked blinking into the sunshine outside Buckingham Palace, reeling at the prince’s use of language” and:
“For a long time afterwards I kicked myself for not confronting the prince on his choice of words – and it’s something I still regret today. He clearly wasn’t taken to task very often by the people around him, which meant offensive language could go unchallenged.”
Silva, who is from a Sri Lankan background, also reported that in another discussion Andrew said “you’ll never get anywhere by playing the white man.” Silva was left baffled by the phrase so looked it up when he returned from the meeting:
“The definition flashed up on my screen: an old-fashioned saying, used during colonial times, meaning that only white people can be trusted to follow the rules, unlike dark-skinned natives.”
Wrongdoing rating: 7/10
5. Best friends with notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein
Famously, Prince Andrew was close friends with Jeffrey Epstein, one of the most notorious pedophiles of all time. Andrew used Epstein’s money to pay off his ex-wife’s debts and they stayed at each other’s properties when they were in the U.S. and United Kingdom respectively.
Andrew invited Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to events at Windsor Castle, hosted a birthday party for Maxwell at Sandringham Palace with Epstein in attendance, and the trio took trips to Thailand together.
Even after the allegations about Epstein were widely known and he’d served a prison sentence Andrew still socialized with him. In Dec. 2010 Andrew and Epstein were pictured casually strolling through Central Park together, with Andrew then attending a dinner party reportedly intended to celebrate Epstein’s release from jail.
Wrongdoing rating: 9/10
6. Raped children
This puts the rest of the Royal Family’s wrongdoings in perspective. Virginia Giuffre was one of many young girls Epstein manipulated and exploited. She has asserted she was forced to have sex with Andrew in 2001 at the age of 17. Giuffre says that Epstein ordered her to do it and she felt pressured as his contacts could have her “killed or abducted”.
Further allegations came to light in Jan. 2024, when witness statements were released that describe Andrew participating “in an orgy with numerous other underaged girls” on Epstein’s private island.
Epstein is dead, Maxwell is imprisoned, but Andrew gets to stroll around like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Where’s the justice?
Wrongdoing rating: 10/10
7. Gave the worst interview in human history
Most prominent figures have given interviews they regret, but few have gone so badly they made an entire film about it. Andrew’s catastrophic Newsnight interview in 2019 was true car crash television that did genuine reputational harm to Andrew and the entire Royal family.
In it he said he had no regrets about being friends with Epstein, describing knowing him as being “very useful”. He claimed he only stayed at Epstein’s house because it was convenient to do so. He defended reports of him sweatily rubbing on girls by claiming that he couldn’t sweat.
The interview was described as “nuclear level explosion bad” for Andrew, delivering the worst public relations crisis for the British monarchy since the death of Diana.
Wrongdoing rating: 6/10
8. Accused the girl he raped of lying about it
Andrew fought against Giuffre’s claims as hard as he possibly could. Perhaps most notably he has repeatedly claimed that a photograph of him with his arm around her (and Ghislaine in the background) has been faked. There’s not a scrap of evidence that this is true and multiple experts have said the photo is genuine.
Andrew fought Giuffre’s lawsuit for “sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress” by attacking her credibility and morals, repeatedly trying to get the case dismissed. All of his attempts failed and in Feb. 2022 he was forced to admit defeat and settle out of court with Giuffre for a huge amount to avoid a humiliating trial he’d have little chance of winning.
Wrongdoing rating: 6/10
Conclusion
What is there really to say but “yikes”? This gives Prince Andrew a ‘Worst Royal’ rating of 58/80, making him by some distance the most abhorrent member of this already very screwed up family. Andrew has now been stripped of his honorary titles and duties, but still lives in the lap of luxury with his every need attended to by servants. If that doesn’t turn your stomach, I don’t know what will.
So, here’s how he stacks up against his family: Kate Middleton is on 15/80, Meghan on 20/80, Anne on 27/30, Harry on 30/80, Camilla on 31/80, William on 33/80, Charles on 45/80, and Andrew way, way out in front on 58/80.
We finally have our ‘Worst Royal’ but, let’s face it, it was never in doubt that Andrew would snatch the crown.