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Prince Andrew is said to be grappling with private turmoil behind closed doors following the news that his late accuser will be speaking out from beyond the grave.
The claim was made by several royal experts who spoke to Fox News Digital following the news that Virginia Giuffre’s memoir will be published in October. The 41-year-old, who accused the disgraced Duke of York and late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein of sexual assault, wrote the book before she took her life in April, the BBC reported.
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“My sources tell me that there are serious concerns about Prince Andrew’s emotional well-being,” royal expert Kinsey Schofield of YouTube’s “Kinsey Schofield Unfiltered” claimed to Fox News Digital.
British broadcaster and photographer Helena Chard also told Fox News Digital that, according to her sources, Andrew has been in isolation at his Royal Lodge home, “waiting for the moment that he will be out of the damning spotlight.”
“Andrew is at an all-time low,” said Chard. “He feels he has lost everything that defined him and has no purpose, a rudderless ship that will never be able to escape the Epstein and Giuffre association.”
Publishing house Alfred A. Knopf said Giuffre made it clear weeks before her death that it was her “heartfelt wish” that the book, titled “Nobody’s Girl,” would still be released in the event of her passing, the BBC reported.
The publisher said that the 400-page memoir, written with co-author Amy Wallace, promises to share “intimate, disturbing and heartbreaking new details about her time with Epstein, [his girlfriend Ghislaine] Maxwell and their many well-known friends, including Prince Andrew.”
A spokesperson for Buckingham Palace previously told Fox News Digital they don’t answer for Prince Andrew, 65, as he’s no longer a working royal.
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“Prince Andrew [has become] even more isolated with a permanently tarnished legacy,” British royals expert Hilary Fordwich told Fox News Digital. “Currently up at Balmoral, the senior royals want nothing to do with him. They are keeping their distance from him.”
“Prince William, in particular, is horrified by the reputational damage Prince Andrew has brought upon the royal family,” Chard claimed.
“He is not a fan of his awkward, bombastic uncle, finding him inappropriate and intolerable. He is especially keeping his distance. I imagine he would love to boot him out as far away from the British royal family as possible. However, he has a pragmatic approach to how he will deal with the Prince Andrew fallout, and time will tell.”
The Times U.K. reported that “Nobody’s Girl” is likely to repeat allegations Giuffre previously made about the prince. Those accusations were filed in 2015 as part of her defamation case against Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 for helping lure teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. The British socialite is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
That earlier memoir, titled “The Billionaire’s Playboy Club,” was unsealed in 2019. In it, Giuffre wrote that she was paid by Epstein to have sex with his circle of friends, including Andrew, The Times reported.
Giuffre claimed in one of her lawsuits that she had sex with the royal three times: in London during her 2001 trip, at Epstein’s New York mansion when she was 17, and in the Virgin Islands when she was 18. Andrew vehemently denied the allegations.
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According to the outlet, Giuffre alleged that in 2001, she was summoned by Maxwell to Epstein’s home in Manhattan to meet Andrew. As Maxwell twirled her around to give the royal “a good look over,” Andrew had a “cheesy grin” and “looked me up and down like a shiny new car on display, and he was about to take it for a test drive.”
Giuffre wrote that Epstein and Maxwell presented Andrew with a caricature puppet of himself from the 1980s show “Spitting Image.” She claimed that he used the puppet to touch her inappropriately.
She also detailed an alleged night out at Tramp nightclub where Andrew embraced her on the dance floor “dripping in sweat.” When they returned to Maxwell’s home, she alleged that the prince displayed a “weird fixation on my feet,” which she described as “the longest 10 minutes of my life.”
Chard said that Andrew didn’t expect that things would get any worse for him.
“Prince Andrew’s life in the public eye has crashed to a humiliating end,” she said. “Virginia’s memoir will no doubt be an uncomfortable read… and the fact that Virginia is no longer with us is immensely sad. Prince Andrew will be featured in the book. However, the book aims to create awareness, highlighting ‘the systematic failures that allow trafficking of vulnerable individuals across borders.’”
“Disgraced Prince Andrew has endured a complete character assassination,” said Chard. “Much of it is due to his own self-destructive bullish behavior. He is the creator of his own demise.”
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Schofield pointed out that Andrew does have a few supporters who will stand by him even when the book hits the shelves.
“He still has a close circle of friends and business associates who believe in him,” she explained.
“Those people won’t be persuaded by this new book. Prince Andrew’s supporters will argue that Virginia Giuffre is not a credible storyteller. They will point to Giuffre initially accusing lawyer Alan Dershowitz of sexual abuse as part of her claims against Jeffrey Epstein. She later dropped the allegations in 2022, stating that she might have made a mistake in identifying him. They will use this as an example of Giuffre being an unreliable narrator.”
“Prince Andrew’s supporters will also question Guiffre’s mental state at the time of executing this project,” Schofield added.
“Virginia Giuffre was forced to admit error in the case of Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s lawyer,” royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams told Fox News Digital. “However, her words are still likely to carry weight. They will mean more embarrassment for the royal family and more trouble for the Yorks.”
In a statement, the publisher said, “’Nobody’s Girl’ was both vigorously fact-checked and legally vetted,” The Times reported. The outlet noted that “The Billionaire’s Playboy Club” was not.
“Giuffre’s memoir is most likely to add renewed pressure for the royal family to accelerate institutional distancing from Prince Andrew,” said Fordwich. “He’s been a constant embarrassment. Now, more lurid details, accusations, and recollections are going to deepen the ghastly damage to his dreadful reputation.”
Epstein was found dead in his New York jail cell weeks after his 2019 arrest. The American financier was awaiting trial on U.S. federal sex trafficking charges involving dozens of teenage girls and young women, some as young as 14. Investigators ruled his death a suicide.
Andrew stepped down as a royal in 2019 following a disastrous interview with Newsnight, where he attempted to address concerns about his links to Epstein. The televised sit-down backfired when the British prince failed to explain his continued association with Epstein or show sympathy for his victims.
Earlier this year, emails published in court documents showed that Andrew was in contact with Epstein longer than he previously admitted, the BBC reported.
According to the interviews shared by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday, Maxwell claimed that a photo widely circulated, showing Andrew with his arm around Giuffre, was “fake.”
“What I can absolutely, categorically say is that I never, at any time, set Andrew up to have relations with… any other human being, ever,” she alleged.
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Andrew previously rejected Giuffre’s allegations and said he did not recall having met her. In 2022, he settled with Giuffre for an undisclosed sum, agreeing to make a “substantial donation” to her survivors’ organization. British newspapers reported amounts for the settlement ranged from $6 million to $16 million.
A statement filed in court said that the prince acknowledged Epstein was a sex trafficker and Giuffre was “an established victim of abuse.”
Andrew may be a hermit these days, but he can’t hide forever, royal expert Ian Pelham Turner told Fox News Digital.
“The Virginia Giuffre saga continues to haunt Prince Andrew even after her sad demise,” he said. “She was a tortured soul and has left Andrew and the royal family in a similar state of mind. There are so many nails in Andrew’s historic coffin. It continues to highlight the weaknesses and secrets within the royal family.”
