Of all the living members of Britain’s Royal Family, Andrew arguably has the closest ties to Canada.
In 1977, Andrew spent a term as an exchange student at Ontario’s prestigious boarding school, Lakefield College. And any royal watcher knows he visited this country on many subsequent royal tours. And while Andrew’s association with this country was once a source of pride for Canadian monarchists, it has become a shameful embarrassment.
On Friday, October 18, a statement from the palace shared the news that Andrew would no longer be using his titles, including that of The Duke of York. His ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, has also removed references to being a Duchess in her social media bios. The titles were given up voluntarily, but there is massive speculation King Charles pushed his sibling to do so. Andrew has also been disinvited from the official House of Windsor Christmas festivities at Sandringham Castle, and there’s speculation he will never be permitted to attend major family events again.
Andrew’s exile from the Royal Family came in advance of Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl. Released this week, the book documents Giuffre’s long and arduous history of sexual abuse at the hands of important men, including alleged but credible claims against Elizabeth II’s second-born son.
As she explains in Nobody’s Girl, Giuffre met notorious American sex trafficker and financier Jeffrey Epstein when she was 17-years-old. He and his girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, began abusing young Virginia under the guise of helping her train to become a masseuse. They also trafficked her to powerful men. Giuffre makes the alleged but credible claim that one of those men was Andrew. Andrew has always maintained he doesn’t remember meeting his alleged victim; however, he did settle with her in 2022.
Anyone who has read Giuffre’s heart-rending memoir will know how ashamed of themselves all of Epstein’s associates should be. Andrew denies sexually assaulting anyone, but we know he maintained contact with Epstein after he was convicted of sex crimes against children in 2010. Staying at the Manhattan home of such a monster because it was, as Andrew described on Newsnight in 2019, “a convenient place to stay” is, at the very least, a slap in the face of victims. At worst, it suggests what many suspect – that Andrew felt no distaste about consorting with an abuser of children, because he was one, too.
One of the most powerful observations in Giuffre’s harrowing book is this: Andrew acted as if it were his “birthright” to have sex with her. He behaved this way despite the fact that she was 17 and he was 41. This word choice gets at the inherent problem with hereditary monarchy: It elevates some people above others. The logic of the institution is literally that some humans are born better than others, deserving archaic titles, such as King or Queen, Prince or Princess. This unavoidable fact brings me back to a question Canadians have debated sporadically for decades: Isn’t it time to abolish The Monarchy’s place in our country? Should the regent of the United Kingdom continue to serve as Canada’s Head of State?
Anyone with casual knowledge of world history will be aware of the British monarchy’s central role in centuries of colonialism. This history alone makes the choice of a British King inappropriate as a national symbol for a multicultural country. After all, so many residents of Canada are people whose families have suffered because of colonialism’s racist ideologies and policies. Consider everything from Canada’s own residential schools to Britain’s occupation of India, and it’s all too obvious why the Crown has upsetting associations. However, Andrew’s alleged sexual violence demonstrates another truth: even if the House of Windsor commits itself to making amends for the monarchy’s historical wrongs, there is no meaningful way forward. We cannot truly modernize an institution built on the idea that some people are special because of an accident of birth. Such concepts are anathema to the equality rights laid out in this nation’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Hereditary monarchy, with its titles and monetary perks like the sovereign grant, naturally breeds a sort of entitlement that, at its worst, can turn men into the most abhorrent offenders. Simply put, Canada should want no part of this.
In The UK, MPs are currently discussing ways the government might respond to Andrew’s alleged misdeeds. In Canada, it is time for a different conversation – one about how the time has come to ditch the Monarch’s role of head of state and put someone else on our money.
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