Royals retreat to Balmoral estate amid Prince Andrew lawsuit

That’s the seldom-used Scottish title that was conferred on Prince Andrew on the day he also became the Duke of York.

But it’s unlikely anyone would struggle to identify the senior Royal who headed to the family’s Scottish bolthole this week amid headlines triggered by a bombshell US sex abuse lawsuit.

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The Queen’s son is reportedly at their sprawling Deeside estate, Balmoral, with his mother, brother Charles and Charles’s wife Camilla as scrutiny continues. His daughter Eugenie and her husband were also pictured arriving there.

Summer at Balmoral is a Royal tradition, but on previous occasions one of the family wasn’t the subject of a legal action that could reportedly lead to a £14 million legal bill if it’s lost.

THE CLAIMS

THE legal action initiated by Virginia Giuffre (below) accuses the prince – who is reportedly worth £32.5m – of rape, sexual battery and sexual abuse. She claims to have been trafficked to England by the prince’s former friend Jeffrey Epstein, who was found dead in a US prison after his arrest for sex crimes.

The prince has already said he can’t remember meeting then 17-year-old Giuffre, despite a picture of them together with Epstein friend Ghislaine Maxwell, and claims to have taken a young Princess Beatrice to a birthday party at Pizza Express in Woking at the time Giuffre alleges the acts were committed in 2001.

That was in an interview with BBC Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis late last year that failed to put to rest the allegations he faced. In it, he also claimed to have been temporarily unable to sweat as a result of “an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War” when he was shot at. It came after Giuffre described him as having been “profusely sweating”.

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Professor Adam Taylor, director of the Clinical Anatomy Learning Centre at Lancaster University, has stated that “an excess or continual exposure to adrenaline is not widely recognised as causing a lack of

sweating in humans” but that data on horses suggests exposure to extreme temperatures may damage the sweat glands that respond to adrenaline.

While Giuffre’s case is a civil lawsuit, it emerged this week that the claims against Andrew are the subject of a review by the Metropolitan Police.

Its head, Dame Cressida Dick, has said “no-one is above the law” and Scotland Yard has confirmed that it is “reviewing a document released in August 2021 as part of a US civil action”.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE ROYALS AND SCOTLAND?

FOR one, it proves the utility of that Aberdeenshire getaway again. It was bought by Prince Albert for Queen Victoria in the 1850s and its 50,000 acres provide a private retreat for the publicly funded family.

Thanks to a successful challenge against the tax bill, the Queen pays lower rates than the local primary school, as revealed in The National earlier this year. The Scottish Assessors’ valuation roll reveals she’s saved almost £7300 on shooting at Balmoral, Abergeldie and Delnadamph.

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The Windsors’ relationship with Scotland has been under sustained strain in recent years, thanks in no small part to the Queen’s intervention prior to the 2014 referendum, when her comment that voters should “think carefully about the future” emerged.

In May, Prince William emphasised the importance of Scotland to the family in a speech to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland during a week-long tour, referring to the links he and wife Kate have with St Andrews and saying of his children: “George, Charlotte and Louis already know how dear Scotland is to both of us, and they are starting to build their own happy memories here, too.

“We have no doubt they will grow up sharing our love and connection to Scotland from the Highlands to the Central Belt, from the Islands to the Borders.”

Amid a Union-boosting push that month, a royal source said: “All members of the royal family have a strong affinity with Scotland.”

But the Scottish Greens are committed to the creation of an independent republic and new Labour MSP Mercedes Villalba this month called for the abolition of the monarchy in the wake of revelations that the Queen has vetted at least 67 pieces of Scottish law since devolution was implemented, and successfully lobbied the Scottish Government for an exemption from a new climate law.

A spokesperson for the Queen said she has to “remain strictly neutral with respect to political matters”.

WHAT ABOUT ANDREW HIMSELF?

HIS approval ratings were at one point given at just 4% here. If that’s correct, then whatever love he personally has for Scotland is clearly not reciprocated.

Like other senior royals, he was educated at Gordonstoun and is a frequent Balmoral visitor.

A petition to strip him of his Earl of Inverness title in 2019 attracted 1500 signatures, with supporters agreeing that his friendship with Epstein meant “it is inappropriate that Prince Andrew is associated with our beautiful city”. One woman commented that the association “brings dishonour to the great name of our Highland capital” – but the campaign failed to gain serious traction.

Meanwhile, Giuffre’s lawyers say his team is “stonewalling” them.

It’s unclear exactly what Andrew is worth, but estimates have put that at a taxpayer-funded £32.5m, and if he is eventually required to make a payment to Giuffre as a result of her claim, it’ll come at least in part from cash paid as part of the Sovereign Grant.

It’s understood that he’s no longer receiving the £250,000-a-year that grant used to bring him, after stepping down from royal duties following that Maitlis interview, but it’s said that he is being supported by the Queen through income from her private Duchy of Lancaster estate.

Earlier this year, the Sunday National covered the launch of the Our Republic campaign that seeks an end to the monarchy in Scotland.

This week it shared a picture of Prince Andrew on social media, stating: “The flaws and criminalities of individuals of the monarchy are irrelevant to the case against their status.

“It’s not like no president has committed a crime.

“The problem is how the institution, and a complicit media and political landscape, will shield them from consequences.

“This unaccountability, that is legitimised and justified by the unaccountability of their ‘god-given’ status, fosters corruption and contempt for the laws that govern the society they rule over.

“Why should laws apply, when some are more equal than others?”