The Prince Andrew scandal will make an excellent 'The Crown' even better

Goodbye then, Your Royal Highness. You had it coming. You really did. 

How a man of Prince Andrew’s repute and prestige managed to get involved with a scumbag like Jeffrey Epstein and then end up sleeping — or not, as he claims — with a minor — a rendezvous that the latter had himself organised — is the stuff riveting novels are made of. It is also gelignite-like material that can blow up an entire empire. Not to mention its dangerous potential to send a 98-year-old weak-hearted Prince Philip into cardiac arrest, or worse, forcing the Queen into conceding that watching her son marry Camilla Parker Bowles was significantly easier. 

It’s been two weeks since Prince Andrew appeared on BBC’s Newsnight, stuttering and stammering through his interview with Emily Maitlis. For those who missed it, it was 50 minutes of mind-bending foolishness, with the prince’s defence as feeble as Edward VIII’s hold on the crown. More than him stepping back from public duties, those who need urgent firing is his staff — the ill-considered drivel he spewed on national television was nothing short of atrocious, all of it put together with little or no preparation. If this wasn’t a scandal already, it sure is now — the muck deep enough to bring down a wall or two at Buckingham Palace.

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Andrew

Which brings me to The Crown, the Netflix original series currently in its third season. The first two instalments were spectacularly good, a rare kind of dazzling television opulence backed up by the most stunning performances. The third, which sees Olivia Colman replace Claire Foy as the Queen, is immensely enjoyable, too, but lacks a Prince Andrew-type villain that would’ve ideally made it even better. Wouldn’t it be a lot more fun if the show just jumped a few decades and cut straight to the Duke of York gazing nervously into the camera, eyes constantly fluttering, guilt dripping down his face? It would definitely be an improvement over the Brits rescuing the Duke of Edinburgh’s mother from the war-ravaged streets of Athens, or Princess Margaret seducing Lyndon B Johnson in order to secure an economic bailout for the United Kingdom.

The thing about The Crown is that, for all its brilliance, it can get a bit repetitive — no problem seems impossible to solve, no controversy ever grave enough to threaten the monarchy. The Queen frets and fumes, but all you get is one sugar-coated denouement after another that mostly leaves you marvelling at Her Majesty’s tenacity. Which is admirable indeed and feeds into the very romantic idea of royalty, but the soft-pedalling also robs the audience of some genuine drama, the kind that Prince Andrew can offer in copious amounts. In the current scheme of things, Prince Charles’ quest to understand the extent of Welsh nationalism in the run-up to his investiture seems a little pointless given that his younger brother has just confessed to being friends —for over a decade — with the world’s most notorious paedophile. In fact, the latest shenanigans of the royal family are making The Crown look, dare I say, awfully stale. For a change, it’ll be nice to see the Queen admit defeat and finally confess that she’s sick of being embarrassed by her 60-something kids.

Why Prince Andrew chose to clear his name in the most ham-fisted manner in front of the whole world is, of course, something only he knows. If he had seen the latest season of The Crown, he might have known to do better. In episode four, his father, in an attempt to tell the world that the royals are a bunch of normal, hard-working people like everyone else, is shown inviting a BBC documentary crew into Buckingham Palace. The film proves to be a catastrophe: the royals come off as drab and over-formal, their personalities as stolid as the facial expressions of the bearskin-wearing men who guard their home. Prince Andrew was exactly that on Newsnight, just a whole lot more guilty, and entertaining, but not in a very positive way. It’s a pity that it’ll take the folks at The Crown at least a few more years to recreate the most shocking royal scandal of our times.