The long shadow cast by Jeffrey Epstein over the royal household is pulling the family toward a punishing reckoning that could leave it irrevocably destabilized, according to an expert.
“This crisis around Prince Andrew—ex-Prince Andrew, as I suppose we really should call him—has metastasized to such a level, has become so extreme, that it feels like it’s going to be very hard for the royal family just to come back to its original shape and pretend that nothing has happened,” Tom Sykes, the Daily Beast’s perennial royal whisperer, said on The Daily Beast Podcast.
Sykes argued that as the Epstein files reveal fresh, damning details about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s entanglement with the convicted sex trafficker, a criminal investigation into the 65-year-old former prince “amazingly, could actually happen.”
“We could end up in a situation here where His Majesty’s brother is at leisure in His Majesty’s prison,” he said.
Sykes noted that King Charles III, who stripped Andrew of his royal titles in October, has often played the role of a passive bystander—acting as if powerless to take any further measures and blaming his brother’s conduct on Queen Elizabeth II’s indulgence of her son, despite having taken the reins of the royal household in the final years of her reign.
“We are way past the point of ‘never complain, never explain’,” said Sykes, who writes the Daily Beast’s Royalist Substack. “There is clearly going to have to be a massive apology from the royal family at some point, because this all happened on Charles’s watch.”
The 77-year-old king rocked the palace last week by announcing that he was ready to help the police investigate allegations that Andrew shared confidential information with Epstein during his time as a trade envoy.
Sykes said the announcement blew Prince William out of the water as he was preparing for a diplomatic trip to Saudi Arabia, noting that some in the prince’s press pool in Riyadh returned to the U.K. convinced that Andrew was on the verge of arrest.
“That really gets to the heart of this conflict between William and Charles, which is tearing the royal family apart,” Sykes told host Hugh Dougherty, the Daily Beast’s executive editor. “I mean, the anger that William’s camp and William’s side have towards Charles about the way that he’s dealt with Andrew.”
William himself has been pulled into the Epstein files’ orbit after it came to light that an Emirati executive who supported his charity had a close relationship with the late disgraced financier.
The 43-year-old prince’s environmental-focused Earthshot Prize charity was founded in 2020 with a contribution from DP World, chaired by Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem until his resignation last week. Epstein and bin Sulayem’s email exchanges included videos and links to porn websites and sex worker services. In one 2009 exchange, Epstein wrote to bin Sulayem, “I loved the torture video.”
Meanwhile, Andrew, who has denied any involvement in sexual abuse with Epstein, has not offered a public response to fresh files documenting his association with the pedophile.
William and his wife, Catherine, Princess of Wales, spoke out about the Epstein files last week, saying they were “deeply concerned by the continuing revelations.”
Sykes argued that while proving the sex trafficking allegations against Andrew could prove challenging, prosecuting him for sharing confidential information would be more feasible.
He warned that failing to hold Andrew accountable could spell the downfall of the crown: “If it doesn’t end up in court at this stage, and if it doesn’t end up with the proper investigation, I think it’s extremely damaging for the royal family.”
Buckingham Palace did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
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