The British monarchy has survived wars, revolutions and constitutional crises across a millennium. It may not survive one man: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

I have covered the Royal Family for 35 years. Diana’s death. The annus horribilis. Harry and Meghan’s exodus. None of it compares to this.

The Epstein connection isn’t fading. It is metastasizing.

King Charles is a good man. Anyone who knows him will tell you that. When he finally became King after waiting seven decades, he wanted real change. He meant it. But good intentions die fast inside palace walls.

He is also fighting cancer — a battle he has conducted with remarkable personal courage, and uncharacteristic transparency. He needs to draw on that strength now for a different fight entirely.

I know something about how he thinks. Once, flying back from India, I passed him — via his press secretary Julian Payne — an early copy of an op-ed I had drafted for London’s evening newspaper, The Standard.

He read it on the plane and later showed it to me, covered in notes and markings. Where I had written about ‘royal power,’ he had scratched it out. Across the page, the word he substituted was leadership.

This is the moment for it.

King Charles is a good man. Anyone who knows him will tell you that. When he finally became King after waiting seven decades, he wanted real change. He meant it. But good intentions die fast inside palace walls

The Epstein connection isn’t fading. It is metastasising

The evidence won’t stop coming. Court documents. Depositions. Redacted files surrendered page by grudging page. Andrew’s protection officers accompanied him to Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse.

It has now emerged that London’s Metropolitan Police are examining claims that Andrew’s royal protection officers ‘turned a blind eye’ to alleged sexual abuse during visits to Epstein’s private island, Little St James.

A week on the premises of a convicted sex offender — ostensibly to end the association. It triggered no investigation. It should have.

The pocketbooks those officers kept — meticulous logs of every journey, every overnight stay — were never seized. Never examined.

That $16million payment to Virginia Giuffre was dressed as charity, not admission. Now it looks like what it probably was: hush money. Where it came from, palace officials will not say on the record. Off the record, they whisper about complications.

The complications are real.

Were Andrew ever charged, the legal terrain would be treacherous in ways rarely discussed publicly. Were he to claim he had kept the King informed of any part of his conduct, the consequences would be as constitutional as the allegations would be criminal. Charles cannot testify in his own courts.

A prosecution could collapse before it reached the dock – much as royal butler, Paul Burrell’s, case imploded in 2002 when it emerged that Burrell, charged with theft, had told the Queen that he had taken some of Diana’s personal items and papers for safekeeping.

The Crown could not call its own monarch as witness. The case fell apart. Those who understand how these things work have not forgotten that precedent.

There is also the matter of the so-called California stores – the archive facility at Windsor Castle where royal papers are held. If documents relating to Andrew have been gathered or seized, the authorities are saying nothing. The silence is telling, in whichever direction it points.

Charles understood the threat clearly enough. He stripped his brother of his titles. It was an attempt to draw a cordon between Andrew and the House of Windsor. It hasn’t held.

William knows it too. He has known it for years.

The evidence won’t stop coming. Court documents. Depositions. Redacted files surrendered page by grudging page. (Pictured: Andrew in the now infamous photograph of him with Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell)

Were Andrew ever charged, the legal terrain would be treacherous in ways rarely discussed publicly

Back in 2022, when Andrew maneuvered to make a public return at the ancient Order of the Garter ceremony at Windsor – one of the oldest and most venerable rituals of the English Crown – William issued an ultimatum to his grandmother. Blunt. Unambiguous.

If Andrew appeared publicly in the procession, he would withdraw. ‘The Duke of Cambridge was adamant,’ a senior royal source told The Evening Standard at the time. ‘If York insisted on taking part publicly, he would withdraw.’ The Queen blinked. Andrew was quietly removed from the public elements of the day at the last minute – so late his name was still printed in the order of service.

This February, as William flew to Saudi Arabia on an official three-day visit, his office issued the couple’s first public statement on the Epstein crisis: ‘The Prince and Princess of Wales have been deeply concerned by the continuing revelations. Their thoughts remain focused on the victims.’

Seventeen words. Timed to be issued before he landed in Riyadh, so the question might be considered answered and not follow him onto the ground. It followed him anyway. Twice, from the sidelines of a football pitch in the Saudi capital, reporters asked whether the Royal Family had done enough.

The answer, in William’s view, is no. It has never been enough. Sources close to him are unequivocal: he believes his grandmother indulged Andrew for too long and that by implication his father has been too slow to act.

‘William believes his father is letting sentiment destroy credibility,’ one source put it. ‘William wants Andrew gone for good. But Charles still sees a brother.’ That is the rift at the heart of the palace. Not Harry. Not the courtiers. Andrew.

And the worst is still to come.

In late April, Charles travels to the United States – the first visit by a reigning British monarch since his mother toured Virginia and Washington in 2007. The occasion is America’s 250th anniversary of independence. It should be a moment of pageantry and soft power at its finest.

It won’t be.

At Lichfield Cathedral last October, a heckler shouted: ‘How long have you known about Andrew and Epstein?’ At Dedham in Essex this February, another: ‘Have you pressurized the police to start investigating Andrew?’ The King heard both. He ignored both. The crowds around him booed the questioners down.

That was England, where royal loyalty still runs deep enough to provide cover.

Queen Elizabeth II and Andrew in 2019

America is different. There are no boos to save him there. No royalists to shout down the awkward questions (Pictured: The Queen and King Charles with President Trump and the First Lady in Windsor Castle, September 2025)

America is different. There are no boos to save him there. No royalists to shout down the awkward questions. Epstein’s crimes were largely committed on American soil. The congressional pressure is American.

Representative Ro Khanna has already said publicly that the King ‘has to answer what he knew about Andrew’ – and warned the monarchy itself could fall if he doesn’t. That is a sitting US congressman speaking. Not a protester outside a cathedral. A lawmaker.

The protests will be organized. The victims’ advocates will be waiting. The broadcasters will not change the subject. What Charles has faced at home – lone hecklers, quickly booed down – could be multiplied tenfold on the streets of Washington. The ambush, when it comes, will not be politely conducted. And every second of it will be broadcast back to Britain.

The Palace knows this. It fills them with dread. The visit is being dressed as soft power diplomacy. Without action on Andrew beforehand, it risks becoming the most damaging royal walkabout in modern history.

Twenty-five years ago, when Andrew was first proposed as Special Representative for International Trade, Charles registered his opposition. It was dismissed as fraternal rivalry. He had warned, with quiet precision, that the appointment would end in disaster. He proposed instead that Andrew serve an apprenticeship under his own roof before being released upon the world. Ignored. The chickens have come home to roost.

Now,  Business & Trade Committee chairman Liam Byrne has confirmed that politicians in Britain are set to investigate Andrew’s conduct during his years as UK trade envoy.

The palace’s default position has always been silence. Wait it out. Let time heal. It worked when Elizabeth controlled access, when friendly editors killed stories, when royal stoicism could outlast any scandal. That era is dead. Stories don’t fade now. They compound. Every document dump reignites the cycle.

Silence isn’t strategy. It’s surrender.

Business & Trade Committee chairman Liam Byrne has confirmed that politicians in Britain are set to investigate Andrew’s conduct during his years as UK trade envoy (Pictured: Andrew during a 2014 visit to Bahrain as UK Trade Envoy)

Charles must lead. Demand full transparency on his brother’s associations and finances during the Epstein years. Independent investigation into palace failures. Real consequences, not gestures. Strip the remaining privileges. Speak directly to his people – not through press secretaries, not through staged photographs, but himself.

His courtiers will resist. The old guard will invoke precedent, tradition, the late Queen’s wishes. They mistake her longevity for infallibility. She got Andrew devastatingly wrong, and they built careers pretending otherwise.

William will follow. He has already shown he will. He is watching his father wrestle with choices no son should witness – between brother and Crown, between family and duty, between private loyalty and public trust. These are the lessons William will carry forward. The mistakes he must not repeat.

Because his moment will come. It always does.

The monarchy is a peculiar thing. Fragile. Archaic. Dependent entirely on trust it must continuously earn. Andrew still holds his privileges. Every day that continues, more people ask the obvious question: what exactly does someone have to do to lose them?

The answer cannot be nothing.

The clock is running. And in late April, it runs loudest of all.

Robert Jobson is a No 1 Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling royal author. His latest book is The Windsor Legacy.