Royal Family Privilege

I recently watched the series on BBC entitled A Royal British Scandal centering on an interview in 2019 between Ms. Emily Maitlis of a division of BBC and Prince Andrew, Duke of York; and on the aftermath of the interview. Although some situations were slightly altered in dialogue and action, it is based upon fact.

In the series Prince Andrew accepts a request to do an interview with Ms. Maitlis. The British public wanted information on Prince Andrew’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein who had just recently been indicted for sex trafficking minors. One of the British public’s major concerns was whether or not Prince Andrew had had sex with Virginia Giuffre, when Epstein brought her to London to introduce her to Prince Andrew. Ms. Giuffre had recently indicated that Prince Andrew had had sex with her while she was in London and on other later occasions; Prince Andrew sued Ms. Giuffre for libel. The royal family’s law team settled the suit out of court in 2022 by donating a sizeable sum to SOAR, an advocacy organization Giuffre had created in 2015. (See PBS article about Giuffre’s death, dated 26 April 2025 at https://www.pbs.org/newhour/world/virginia-giuffre-plaintiff-in-epstein-and-prince-andrew-sex-trafficking-case-dies-at-41.)

What repeatedly struck me was the obsequious attitude extended to the Royal Family throughout each episode. When it was raining, each member of Prince Andrew’s family was met at the door of their residence by a staff person with an umbrella to walk them to the door of a car parked nearby–I estimate ten steps away–in order to protect them from being rained upon. Someone opened the car door, someone held the umbrella, someone closed the door for each family member. At dinner, an attendant assigned to each family member served each course and later picked up the plates and brought the next course, pulled the chair away from the table when the
family rose in unison after eating.

A capstone of this service was a line directed to Sarah, Duchess of York, who though divorced, still lives with Prince Andrew and their daughters; in response to a question, Prince Andrew said to her something like, “You’re not family any more,” meaning the considerations extended to the Royal Family did not include her.

Small wonder some of us are grateful we do not have kings any longer. Yet with a constitution becoming less viable with every act of congress and with many if not all recent Supreme Court decisions, how safe is our royalty-free future?

One of the very important lines in the series above was spoken by Ms. Maitlis to one of the members of her production team at BBC. She said that everyone only talks about the prince and the interviewer; no one ever asks about the woman who was Prince Andrew’s victim, Virginia
Giuffre.