Thursday, November 21, 2019

Prince Andrew’s Friendship With Epstein Joins a List of Royal Scandals



THE NEW YORK TIMES: A highly scorned televised interview by the prince was only the latest upheaval to befall Britain’s royal family over the past century.

LONDON — The British monarchy has survived public crises before — religious schisms, revolutions, murderous kings — but this week the royal family scrambled to confront a relatively new opponent: the embarrassing televised interview.

The Duke of York, better known as Prince Andrew, the second son of Queen Elizabeth II, struggled to defend himself during a < ahref=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/world/europe/prince-andrew-epstein.html?module=inline target=_blank>50-minute interview with the BBC as he talked about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier accused of sex trafficking.

His interview, widely criticized in the British press as disastrous after it was broadcast last weekend, catapulted a long-simmering controversy into a full-blown scandal for the royal family, among the worst in its modern history.

Reacting to the backlash, the prince announced on Wednesday that he was indefinitely stepping away from public life, with permission from the queen. But over the past century, a number of scandals have rattled the British royal family. » | Megan Specia and Alan Yuhas | Thursday, November 21, 2019