By Molly Claire Goddard
9:23am PST, Feb 12, 2026
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According to expert
Tom Sykes, after it was revealed that King Charles III reportedly paid to help silence Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's accuser,
Virginia Giuffre, The Firm will have to stop blaming
Queen Elizabeth II for trying to keep the former Duke of York in the royal fold. "You do not sign off on a package like that as a bystander. You do it because you are making a hard political calculation about what is in the interests of the Crown. Charles wasn't dragged into this against his will; he was at the heart of the cover-up," the journalist wrote for his
The Royalist Substack.
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Tom Sykes emphasized that, despite rumors of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's ties to Jeffrey Epstein being floated since 2019, King Charles III continued to allow his younger brother to appear in public with the family. "Charles' camp blaming the late monarch's [Queen Elizabeth II] indulgence of her second son for the scandal now engulfing the House of Windsor is a disgraceful slur on her legacy," he wrote. "Yes, the Queen did allow Andrew to walk her into that memorial, but that was, to be fair, a one-off. Despite her adoration of her favorite son, she otherwise excised him completely from public life. Charles, by contrast, from the moment he became king, starting with his mother's funeral, consistently went to great lengths to ostentatiously include Andrew in the tableau. The most obvious example is Christmas. The last Christmas of Elizabeth's reign, at Sandringham, did Andrew walk to church with the rest of the family in full view of the cameras? No, he did not. He was kept out of that most symbolic of royal photo opportunities. The very first Christmas of Charles's reign, by contrast, Andrew was there, striding to church with the rest of them at Sandringham, very clearly back in the fold. That was a deliberate choice, a piece of choreography that told the world: he's one of us again."
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Despite King Charles III stripping Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of his titles and removing him from Royal Lodge, Tom Sykes believes it was more to calm the public. "If you want further evidence of Charles' willingness to allow Andrew enormous latitude, then look at the way this has been handled in terms of statements and titles on his exclusive watch," he wrote. "The initial attempt in October [2025] to deal with the problem relied on an appalling statement in Andrew's own name — banging on about how honorable he was, how desperately he did not want to inflict damage on the nation and how magnanimously he was therefore being by giving up his Duke of York title to spare us all any further distress."
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It reportedly took pressure from
Prince William to secure Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor a harsher punishment. "It was outrageous that the palace allowed Andrew to present himself as the noble victim in his own scandal," Tom Sykes wrote. "Only when the backlash came — led, as I have reported, by
Prince William inside the family and by a horrified public outside it — did King Charles III finally actually do something substantive."
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Due to King Charles III's reported protection of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the monarchy could be irreparably tarnished. "The British public have regularly been treated like idiots by Charles' office during this long-running debacle, expected to swallow whatever line the palace chooses to feed the royal rota [list] that day," Tom Sykes said. "Too much of the British press, terrified of losing access to the king, simply types up the spin and puts it on the front page. But people can see what is going on because they have eyes."
