The Royals with Roya and Kate - Andrew, Epstein and a monarchy now changed forever?

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

This week, after Prince Andrew was forced to give up his Duke of York title, full details of the life of Prince Andrew’s accuser were revealed. Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir ‘Nobody’s Girl’ is a harrowing read. Its publication came in the same week the King made an historic State Visit to the Vatican, with the King and the Pope praying together for the first time in five centuries. As history was made in Rome, there were more revelations about Andrew and the "peppercorn" rent he pays for Royal Lodge, his Windsor home. Calls by politicians and the public for more action to be taken have grown louder and led to debate about the British constitution and the monarchy.Roya Nikkhah, royal editor of The Sunday Times is joined by The Times religious correspondent and Kaya Burgess and investigations reporter, George Greenwood.Producer: Robert WallacePhoto: Getty Images Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Royneika and welcome to the Royals from The Times and Sunday Times. I think it's fair to say that after the past week, the British monarchy is no longer the monarchy it was. Something has changed. At 7 o'clock last Friday evening, Buckingham Palace issued a statement, short, formal, but seismic. Prince Andrew has relinquished his royal titles and honours, principally his title as the Duke of York and his membership of the Order of the Garter, the United Kingdom's highest order of chivalry.

A voluntary surrender of his titles, forced by pressure both private and public. Intended to draw a line under more than 20 years of controversy over the allegations about his links with a convicted sex offender, Geoffrey Epstein. But if that was the palace's hope, it's had the opposite effect. What's followed has been a cascade of criticism, not just of Prince Andrew, as he's still called, but from some quarters of the palaces handling of this affair. We've since learned that Andrew pays what's

been described in documents as a peppercorn rent for Royal Lodge, his sprawling home on the Windsor estate, a revelation uncovered by the Times that's only added fuel to the fire. And last night, the king returned to London, home from an historic visit to Rome, where this week he became the first British monarch since the Reformation to pray publicly alongside a Pope at the Vatican. It was a moment crafted to project moral leadership and unity on the world stage. But now, in the shadow of moral outrage at home, this week, the full details of the life of Prince Andrew's accuser were revealed. Virginia Dufre's posthumous memoir, Nobody's Girl, is a harrowing read. The accusations against Andrew are of course well known

and he's always denied knowing Miss Dufre or having sex with her. At the time of the alleged encounters, she says she was 17, a teenager drawn into the world of sexual exploitation run by What we now see in devastating detail are those allegations about that world, the abuse, the coercion, the years of trafficking, the trapped young women like Virginia. This is a passage from her memoir. In my years with them, they lent me out to scores of wealthy, powerful people. I was habitually used and humiliated. and in some instances, choked, beaten and bloodied. I believed I might die a sex slave. Six years ago, in the Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew, Emily Maitliss put forward the phrase that your phrase lawyer once used.

You couldn't spend time around Epstein and not know. Andrew replied that he knew what the warning signs were, but he never saw them. So what now? For the king, for the prince who remains a prince, and what for any investigation? What did Andrew know? And what more should he do now? And a wider question. Can the crown remain a symbol of moral authority when it's forced to reckon with the conduct of one of its own? With me on the Royals is the Times Investigations reporter George Greenwood and Religious Affairs correspondent, Kaya Burgess. Yesterday I was at the Vatican for what was a hugely symbolic act.

King Charles became the first head of the Church of England to pray publicly with the Pope, praying together nearly 500 years after the Church of England split from Rome. Huge moment. was that guy? It's the sort of thing that just for centuries and centuries and up until very recent times would have just been totally unthinkable. I mean, not only what would Henry the 8th make of it having broken from Rome in the first place, but it's interesting we've now got Pope Leo the 14th and it was Pope Leo the 13th about 130 years ago who declared that the entire Anglican church and all of its holy orders were, I think his phrase was absolutely

null and void. The idea even then that a British monarch, supreme governor of the Church of England would be there praying up on the same stage as a Pope in the Sistine Chapel just would have been unthinkable. And I was actually really surprised by the phrase that the royal family used afterwards. They shared some photographs on social media, said this was a historic moment. And they said it marked a joining of hands between the Church of England and the Catholic Church, which is quite a choice of phrase. It's not a neutral one. It very much symbolises this coming closer together, which given the history is really remarkable. One of the really big things that the palace made in all the briefing and the run-up to the visit. And it was the phrase

that was used throughout from various cardinals and various points of the visit was this idea of brotherhood and this title that was bestowed on the king as royal confrata, sort of showing this brotherly unity between the Catholic Church and the Church of England. I think it was designed to sort of really ram home the idea of monumental occasion this was. And there was this very symbolic moment in the second service of the day, which was at St. Paul outside the walls and I was there sitting and watching it all as the king was presented with this new chair, this new sort of almost sort of throne that had been designed and made for him with a motto on it that bestowed on him this honour of being royal confrata and

you know, the joining of hands and, you know, brother of the church. And it was not lost on all of us that there was so much talk about royal brothers, royal brothers and brothers as all of this is still raging back home. And you could not get away from it that as historic as this visit to the Vatican was, given it, you know, you'd never had a British monarch praying with the Pope before. This was all against the backdrop of what was going on with Prince Andrew.

And I just wanted in terms of sort of from the church's perspective, how much that kind of cut through. Well, that's a great point. I mean, that King Charles has now been declared this sort of the royal brother of this basilica in Rome. And in exchange, Pope Leo will be the sort of royal brother of chapel at Windsor. And yes, mentioning Royal Brothers, the whole point perhaps of trying to get that statement out last Friday was the hope it wouldn't overshadow this historic

moment this week, which clearly, you know, good luck with that. But yes, having the concert reminder of Royal Brothers, Royal. It did strike a certain ironic chord. I mean, the history is really fascinating that the English crown has had this link with that very particular basilica and abbey in Rome, going back to Saxon time, Saxon kings. offer of Mercier used to give money to pay for the upkeep of the Tomb of St. Paul. And now for the English monarch to have their own seat with their own coat of arms in a papal Pacific is, again, an absolutely remarkable thing. Justin Welby, when he was Archbishop, had a very close relationship with Pope Francis. There are a lot of people in all churches

who would love all the churches one day to reunify, which I can't imagine anyone ever getting over all the various differences for that to happen. But having that all against this backdrop of what's been going on. You just have to wonder, was it the elephant in the room? Did the Pope offering in private moment saying his house have things? I mean, you know. Any other royal brothers we should be talking about? You could either argue that the timing was the worst timing ever, which I think the palace sort of feared it was going to be completely issue. All you could argue it's quite good timing for the kings. It gave him quite few moments of, you know, prayer and reflection. Yes. And my goodness me, he's got, he's had an awful lot to pray and reflect on. I want

to bring you in, George. And thanks so much for joining us. We moved to Rome. I mean, the sort of royal entourage and the whole pack moved to Rome, just a day or so after you had broken a fantastic huge story for the Times, which shed a lot of light and a few answers to the question that everyone has been asking for very long time, which is how on earth does Andrew still manage to live at Royal Lodge? Now, to sort of rewind, we had last Friday the announcement from Prince Andrew, I mean, Buckingham Palace put it out, but it's from Prince Andrew, that he was voluntarily giving up his titles as Duke of York and some of the other, you know, frills like the Order of the Garter and all of that. And that was supposed to sort of quieten everything down.

And then, you know, if anything, you could argue that it's open just a bigger can of worms and the likes of you, Investigations reporter who has been, I know, doing a lot of work into Andrew over the past year. There's so many more questions to answer. But this revelation from you about Andrew's lease, which the palace have been talking about for a long time, he's got a cast iron lease. The king has tried to get him out of Royal Lodge, but he's got a castine with the Crown Estate so the King can't force them out. I mean, you shed some amazing light on that. Tell me what you found out and how you found it.

Sure. So to take back to Sunday, myself, my colleague Tom Withrer, who did the story with our sitting down, working for our Sunday shift, and we're thinking, well, how do we get back into this story? Everyone wants to know, okay, it's no longer going to be the Duke of York. He's no longer going to be Royal Garter.

What royal public things is he doing? And one of these things is residency of Royal Lodge. Now, the history of the lodge is very interesting. Obviously, the Queen Mother lived there until her death, and then Andrew moved in shortly after that. But while it's not necessarily a public asset in the same way as other things, it is seen as something that really should be preserved for the nation. It's a big, almost like, national trust-style property.

And the fact that somebody who is associated with such a terrible, notorious paedophile is living in that property, it still smacks many people as just wrong. So who technically owns it? So the property is a freehold and a leasehold. The freehold is owned by the Crown Estate. That is a public body that passes its, well, it's a private company, but it passes its income to the Treasury. So, and that manages a lot of the historic rural properties that are held in the name of the Royal Family. But after various reforms over the years, it was judged that this material should be used for the wider public benefits.

and it pays a lot of this money that it gets to the taxman and then that's distributed around to pay for public services and then a portion of that money is kept back and used to fund the public works, the royal family. So what was it that you, what was the revelation that you discovered that came with such a bombshell? Tell us that. So the bombshell we discovered

as he wasn't paying anything for it ongoing. So we already knew that Andrew, when he took this 75-year lease to the property in around 2003, he would have to put some money towards it. He paid about a million pounds for the lease and agreed to pay about seven and a half million pounds for a process of upkeep

because it wasn't in great state. Which is a big sum. So I think the thing is what we can't say is Andrew hasn't put any money towards this. Obviously we can question where that money came from. A lot of this money must have come from the sale of Sunning Hill which is gifted him by the Queen.

But there was money paid for this property. But the question is how good a deal has he got on this lease? Has the assumption been for years he's been paying market rent? Precisely. Or at least paying a rents. Which would be what? What would be market?

rent for rural lodge? So they did a bit of a calculation of this in 2003. Actually, there's a report by the National Order Office around leases of this kind. What else can you compare it to? Well, this is the part of the problem is that it is, I mean, we've actually been trying to do some work getting property experts to give an assessment of the value and they struggled. But the National Auditors, hopefully, did the work for us. And they calculated the notion of rent on that kind of property would be around £260,000 a year. Now, what the value of his, works to it, you know, go match 2003 is more like £110,000 a year. So he's basically getting it less than half price. But of course, the money that he used to do the refurbishment,

while it was his, it was granted him by the Queen. And while that's, again, not public money, it is money that you expect for the royal family to spend in their works as the royals, not necessarily in keeping their disgraced son in a very nice flat. So it is the implication that actually the public purse has been losing or not maximising the full rent it could have got from Royal Lodge. And he has been paying, as he discovered, a peppercorn rent, which is, we assume nothing. Well, it's, I mean, if you read the contract, it's actually a pepper, you know, sometimes you have peppercorn rents that are, you know, 50 pounds a year or whatever, five pounds a year. The actual phrasing of the contract is a pepacorn, a literal peppercorn pran if demanded. So effectively this is a, you know, sometimes the phrasing is, you know, peppercorn rent can be confusing.

but this is not actually anything being paid. You can pay rent on that just with some seasoning. Well, I mean, it's more of a legal fiction, right? It's this idea that, you know, you accept that you're a talent, you don't own the property freehold, but you do have a right to stay there. And how easy was it for you to get hold of that lease

from the Crown Estate? Surprisingly easy. So on the Sunday, as I said, me and Tom are talking through, well, how do you put the story forward? We have the idea, it's going with the Redder says, well, why don't we should ask for copy the lease?

They've been talking about this cast iron lease. Let's see it. Let's see it. Let's actually get a copy of it and look. And initially, the Crown Estate weren't as helpful as they might have been. They pointed us to this NAO report that gave out some of the terms of it. They also pointed us to a public version of it, which is a heavily redacted version that sits on the land registry. But this obviously had a lot of stuff that wasn't there. We wanted to get into the clauses.

We wanted to see if it really was as cast iron has been briefed out by royal sources. So we wrote a story about it in Monday. paper, just pointing out that lots of royal experts were saying there's no reason this shouldn't be public. There's a real public interest in this being out there so we can assess as journalists, you know, is the allegation that's cast iron incorrect? Is this a fair assessment of what it is? Is there any way that the royals might not have the stomach for, but actually to get him out of that property that is not publicly known? So we write that story in Sunday's paper with those calls. And on the Monday morning, I also file a request under the Freedom

Information Act to actually start having a fight for it. So I write about a two-page letter to them saying, you know, there's no exemptions under the rules for disclosure that you can refuse us for. You can stonewall us if you want, but we're going to keep fighting for this. And I think the combination of all that pressure from the public who are just upset by the situation, those who read our story, that were just saying, well, why isn't this public? And starting that legal process, I think, eventually caused the Crown of State to say, well, we're in the firing line here.

We've not really done anything wrong. we're just sort of, we're stuck in the situation. So we're just going to be transparent. So in response to Tom's email of Sunday, the Crown Estate email me and Tom, just a copy of the unredacted lease about 5pm on Monday. I mean, which all of which begs the question, why hasn't the Crown Estate put that lease out before?

Is there a lack of transparency here from the Crown Estate? Where is that coming from? Is there pressure coming from the Palace, from the Royal Family? What's going on there? Well, that's something I would love. love to know. How high do you think it's likely to have been signed off as well, that that could have been released?

Again, I don't know. It's really interesting and it really begs questions around what the choreography of this, whether, for example, the Crown Estate, who is a separate body to the Crown, which is a separate organisation, but obviously anything called the Crown Estate, there will be royal influence in that. I don't know whether at some point someone in Buckingham Palace has just given them the nod saying, look, just get it out there now, or whether the Crown Estate took its own and said, look, we're in the firing line here, the bucking at the palace. We don't actually

have formal control of us. And we're now taking shots on this. Are we just going to proactively put it out there? But then the real revelation compared to the version of the land registry was this peppercorn rent. And what's so shocking, as we've reported in today's paper. You've had another story that that was redacted. It was redacted. So the version that was filed with the land registry, it's the official version that, you know, it can be redacted for various reasons. There's privacy reasons. You won't get the full document on the LAMB registry.

But my colleague, Mani Modolo, who worked with us in the story, talked to one of his experts and explained it's very uncommon to redact that kind of clause in a lease you file with the palace. And, of course, you know, Kate had previously seen a copy of these lease. And this part was also wiped out on her version. And it's fascinating. And it does smack of someone not wanting to have to say, he's living here rent free, not just in all our heads this week,

but in the property. So it's a fascinating follow-up story just when you put the thing side by side, you suddenly go, oh no, we didn't miss this. It was just being withheld from us. It does feel like there is a change now from official organisations who perhaps have towed a certain line,

perhaps not been as transparent as they could have been, who knows whether those came from requests from members of the royal family or from the palace. But it feels like there's a bit of a line being drawn to say something has changed. the floodgates have opened with Prince Andrew you know we're going to put everything out there so Kai I want to sort of bring you back in as well

because this has become now it's not just a sort of private problem for the palace is it and the king it has become an issue for Parliament as well we've seen Parliament drawn into it he's voluntarily relinquishes titles for now but that is just sort of led to clamours and calls members of the public from some MPs

that that's not enough that there should be a formal act of parliament there should be some sort of legislation to strip him with the titles. And we now have various MPs putting forward private members bills. We had Keir Stammer on Wednesday in the House saying he would support an inquiry into more information on the Crown Estate and the lease and his living arrangements. I thought that was a seismic move. As the King was arriving in Rome on Kirstama's plane, Kirstama was saying, I would support more inquiries on this. Well, it's really fascinating. I mean, both with the, you know, I cover the Church of England quite a lot and with the royals,

that the kind of unusual constitutional role of both, the Church of England being the established church, and clearly it's HM government, and the degree to which Parliament can legislate for things, but it tends not to, you know, when it came to the sex abuse scandals in the Church of England, there were MP saying the Church of England is almost, it has an assembly, which is like a devolved body of Parliament. You know, the King gives royal assent to general synod papers in the same ways. can MPs, you know, take the ball by the horn, say, look, if the Church of England is being too slow to get its house in order on safeguarding and abuse, can we use our power as MPs for private members bills and to actually legislate and hold their feet to the fire? There is such reticence, though, isn't there with the royal family? Well, exactly.

Which are never spoken about in Parliament. Well, indeed, and that whole convention, and again, it's convention. Yeah. Is it time that, you know, like we've seen with the church, which for decades people probably just thought, well, we don't want to be seen to be interfering in sort of church. in sort of church and state, despite the fact we have an established church. Is this another floodgate that's going to sort of open where MPs are going to start saying, again, like the church, if you're not going to get your own house in order? It feels like something has changed.

I mean, you had, the beginning of last week, you had Ed Miliband doing the round, towing the official line saying, it's for the royal family to make any further decisions on what else could happen. It's for the royal family. And that was sort of the line coming from government. Then you had, okay, senior opposition MPs like Robert Jenrick, breaking cover, saying his words, Prince Andrews is a disgrace and the taxpayer should not be doing

anything for him anymore. He should be out of sight, out of mind. Then you've had private members bill put forward. It feels like there's momentum growing, as much as the palace think that this is sort of subsiding this story. It feels like parliament and ministers

and some members of parliament are emboldened. I wonder from your experience, do you think that the palace or the king in a way would almost kind of welcome it? You'd think he would not necessarily want MPs legislating about matters to do with his family, but he might have a reluctance to take certain steps against his own brother for, you know, brotherly loyalty reasons.

But then having MPs starting to militate in this way might give him the cover to say, I have to do this because of the clamour. I think there are two issues with it. I think the first issue is there is huge nervousness at the palace and the royal family that if members of Parliament start debating this issue and actually do start talking about it,

If there is an inquiry, exactly, then what else might they start talking about in terms of family? I think the second issue is there is probably a nervousness of, and I think probably unfounded, because I think this is so unique to Prince Andrew's sort of case. But there's possibly a nervousness that this would set some kind of precedent that Parliament might just start getting rid of titles left, right and centre when they feel like it. I think this is the big question. And actually the Andrew question is almost forcing this matter now because of refusal to sort of play by the old rules of convention. You know, that if pressure goes on you, you move out. I think the risk for the royal family is that people start talking about putting it on a more constitutional basis.

We don't have a written constitution. A lot of it's by convention in the UK. And actually, are we going to start seeing a position with MPs say, well, hang on a sec. You know, we should have the power to say we're not going to let Prince Andrews, just take, for example, live in the Royal Lodge. We should have the powers to regulate this stuff. And obviously, in the moment, there's no power. They're all sick with raw and provocative. And it's bounced. It feels like the responsibility is bounced from Parliament.

to the royal family, back to parliament, you say back to you, back to you, and it's not going anywhere. But people want something. It feels that that voluntary relinquishment of the titles doesn't feel like it's done the job. No. I think the wider problem here is around, you know,

again, talking about investigating royal families is they're just so transparent, use of trusts. I think the problem with all that is that obviously it keeps the roles, you know, above reproach, it keeps a lot of those private matters out of the public sphere. No one can ever see the wills.

No one, you know, there's so much darkness around. the finances as the Sunnay Times has done with dispatches. You can't make a freedom of reverse request for like raw spending on things. And I think the problem the Royals have got is now that this Andrew thing is now they're trying to fix something with a convention, as in, oh, he won't use the title. The public is going to get more and more sort of fed up with this saying we don't want this person anywhere near public life, even in theory. And the risk is that MPs become more emboldened to say, well, actually, let's put them more on a statutory basis. let's pass more laws that directly regulate how the royal families works.

And I think, for some, I think that will at least, as you say, make things clear and give the king an out of having to do this stuff. I have to say, I'm sort of interested and surprised by the reticence of both Parliament and the royal family to explore this issue further in terms of stripping the titles. Because a you gov poll this week show that 80% of the public would support that move. 80% of the public would support Prince Andrew actually being stripped of the titles, not them just going into as the palisay abeyance because he still has them. Including Prince or the Duke of York?

The Duke of York title to Leonardo, the Garson or that. And I think if the ever sort of changing purpose of the royal family is to try and litmus test the mood music of the public, and as far as Parliament's concerned, that's sort of how, you know, they're elected on that. What's the reticence?

Yeah. Is it because they're nervous about the precedent, I think it is? Because what is kind of on the list? What could happen next? In terms of saying, look, to Prince Andrew, these aren't just in abeyance, but we're formally kind of stripping them. Then obviously there's questions about the Prince title, which seems hard to imagine they would remove.

And then the question of, you know, line of succession, can you see in the future the monarchy in this country taking a similar step to say in Denmark where they've slimmed it right down to be, it's the monarch and the direct heirs and everyone else is a private citizen, essentially. How far could it go? Well, you know, Prince William has been talking a lot

about recently about change being on his agenda. I mean, there are big changes of foot if he wants to mate them. There's no doubt, absolutely no doubt that he's very concerned about all of this. But it's setting up a lot of big answer questions down the line for his reign, for sure. And I think this question with him as well is,

I mean, very obviously interesting in Sunday, his team are now briefing quite carefully that we will sort this problem when I'm out. That puts Charles in a very difficult position because, you know, it's clear what's coming down the line. So what happens next? Yeah, I mean, William does not want this problem in his entry still when he becomes king. And, you know, let's hope that that's not for many years to come.

But it's not solved at the moment. I mean, it feels like, and you know, I'm sure this is very much on your horizon, George, there is a lot more to come. It doesn't feel like we've sort of scratched the surface or we're just at the tip of the iceberg at the moment. What's your sense of what else might come out? Is it much more from the Epstein files? in the US. Is it more on the national security issue in terms of Andrew's links with Yang Tembo, the alleged Chinese spy? We heard last week he'd been hanging out with another very senior

leader in the Chinese regime. What's your sense of where you're digging, where more stuff may come out? I think the revelation that he kept in contact with Epstein longer than he said, and I think that's going to be, I mean, to be honest, the damage is already done on that side. He appears to have lied. He doesn't know. He's not an interview so much. As Emily Maitley said, It's made me rethink every single thing he said in that interview. Exactly. But I'm not sure what there is that could come out, could do any more damage has already been done. And maybe links to defray specifically in written documents.

I mean, I wonder how much more will come out now from the decade he had extraordinarily as the UK's special representative for trade. I mean, he was a trade envoy going around the world, being paid for by the taxpayer, representing the UK on the international stage, apparently to cut deals. I wonder how many more people are sort of retracing his steps as to where he went, what he was actually doing officially. Yeah, I think that's going to get a very fruitful search. I also think to some extent, you know,

and we've had this trouble investigating that lots of people who work in these jobs do have the never complain, never explain approach. Even if you turn up their door, they're often unwilling to have a chat with you. They just say, we just don't want to talk about this stuff. I do wonder how that might be changing now. whether people might want to come forward. And if they do, of course, and they're listening to this podcast,

then you can get in touch with me and I'll be very happy to talk to you. But I think that I do wonder whether that reticence to talk to the press or to come forward in this stuff, maybe slightly dissolving, given the scale of what's now happening with Andrew. One way it could get worse

is that they do stripping with his titles and he's sort of out of the royal family and then there follows the Netflix series and the podcast and the Oprah interview. And then think, actually maybe we should have kept him there. I think that is half the worry. and I think I wrote a column a few months ago

where I effectively sort of said I think keeping Andrew and Harry at arm's length it's backfired on the Royal Family and the King because they don't know what Andrew's been up to and now it's all coming home to Reese with all these sort of bombshells and surprises I think all the other issue as well is that it's got the sort of global reach

it's not just here that this is being felt and it's exploding in America everyone's waiting for the Epstein files to be released which we expect that's going to happen at some point in the next few weeks or months how much more will come out then. You've got Washington all over it. You've got a lot of people waiting to see

what other sort of very powerful men are implicated. So it feels like, unfortunately for the royal family and for Prince Andrew, it's a sort of global scandal. And that begs the question why not act now. Obviously, they did act on Friday, and that was quite a step. I know how the king's very reticent

about taking more formal action. But it does beg the question, why not to go the whole way? Just do it all in one with it. Just get on with it. Otherwise, it's going to be drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. And next week they take away one other thing. And again, the story just stays on the front pages for months. I think one of the things as well, just thinking about it,

when we're talking about sort of the American element, we saw and heard from Amy Wallace this week, who's the co-writer of Virginia Joufrey's posthumous memoir, Nobody's Girl. There is something, I think, as well, very powerful about hearing Virginia's words from beyond the grave. A lot of people have said there's nothing new in this book. But when you read her words, and she's no longer around,

of course, she took her own life back in April, it becomes even more resonant. And Amy Wallace has said this week, she's made the point repeatedly, you know, in various interviews, she has said he was in those houses, he has information about other things that were going on. So yes, he could step forward if he were a different person and say, I feel terrible about this. And I want to say, these women are telling the truth. And here's what I saw. And of course, Andrew has never done that. Despite when he signed that, you know, multi-million pound out-of-court settlement with Virginia Juffray in 2022, admitting no liability.

he said in a statement he would do everything he could to support victims of sexual abuse. But a lot of people have made the point including Amy Wallace. He hasn't. You made a really good point earlier about this kind of the sort of moral standing of the monarchy. And it comes back to the similar thing with the Church of England as I talking about. The idea that the Church of England has its bishops and archbishops in the House of Lords and they will stand up and they will take a moral Christian perspective on housing or migration or welfare or whatever it might be because that's kind of why they see that they're there.

and clearly the monarchy as well will take a moral stand and Charles will talk about the environment or talk about, you know, young people and opportunities and so on. And it's a linked thing where, however much affection there still is for, you know, individual royals as there was for the late queen or for King Charles, for the institutions now, their moral high ground is kind of vanishing. Compromised. And when they stand up and they say,

I feel really strongly about this particular moral issue, they're going to say, yeah, but Andrew's still in Royal Lodge or in the church, have you, so. The queen and the Dutch, of Edinburgh, both really passionate, long-standing campaigners and advocates of raising awareness around victims of sexual abuse, how compromise will their work be going forwards? Yeah, exactly. Or how much more important will their work be going forward?

So you've now, you know, we're going to have a new Archbishop of Canterbury in place in a few months. A woman? A woman, the first woman, it would be very fascinating to see when she first goes to meet the Pope, who gave her some quite warm words of welcome, but that will be a whole new dynamic. What will her relationship with the king be like, who is technically her sort of... Boss, supreme governor. And there were questions again with the whole constitution of when the scandals were happening, should the king have done more to step in?

Because he's the only person with the actual power to hire and fire. But he doesn't. That whole tying in through when the new Archbishop of Canterby was named, it was Downing Street who then passes it to. That kind of whole interplay between that whole, these sort of great institutions of state. And now their moral high ground is evaporating. And, you know, what, if anything, can they do to restore? or trust in the kind of institutions that they represent

and their place in the whole system is going to be... I mean, you know, Prince Andrew is still in line to the throne, clearly, quite distant by this point, but those sorts of things do come up. I want to ask you both, just as we try and draw some conclusions from this, there's two reporters who are not royal reporters. When that statement from Prince Andrew came through last week

and you could feel something quite huge was about to explode, how big a seismic moment did that, feel and has the last week felt in terms of shifting sands. It did feel big. I mean, you're used to the royal soap opera. William and Harry, and are they talking? And is Harry going to see the king when he comes back

and you kind of follow all of that? And then every now and again, you get one of those stories which just lands. I think the big thing is that people who probably have no interest in royal stories otherwise out in the public, they stop and they think this is a really big deal. It's cut through, hasn't it? Yeah, exactly.

And it becomes interesting to see how, you know, will the polls on Republicans, It's always existed in the UK as a kind of a minority. No one would ever think that the public would actually turn again. But, you know, is it going to tick up? We never thought the British public would vote for Brexit. Everyone thought, well, they might be a protest. And then it happened. You know, is this going to sway things like a tipping point? How comparable is it to past crises in the monarchy? Well, I mean, in terms of crises, I think if we look back, 1997, the death of Diana and Princess of Wales was seen as a huge seismic, sand-shifting moment for them. the monarchy where perhaps for a rare moment in her life and her very long career as monarch, the late Queen Elizabeth didn't read the room and then did read the room very quickly. And there's always been so much discussion about, you know, Diana, what Diana taught the monarchy in life and death, that that was a big moment and it was nearly a major crisis which the royal family lost, but they sort of, you know, they pulled it back.

Do you think George's feels like a sort of similar moment where unless lessons are learned, and something will change probably not in an ideal way for the royal family? I think that's a big risk with this. I think that as with the case of the death, Diana, the lesson learned there was the need to be more engaging with the public and actually share their grief. It's a very different situation to this, but it is that need to be connectedness.

But obviously, as people who are elected by definition, you don't have to talk to the public in the same way. You have a big public role, but it's different to that of politicians. It's different to other institutions like that. They needed to be humans rather than an institution, didn't it? And in some ways, it's the same, you know, that whatever the royal rules about the lease or whatever the, you know, whatever the rules about how monarchy is supposed to operate, you know,

through convention rather than the rules. I think this is a really example where need to be close to the public on this and be like, well, whatever the convention is, don't worry, just get rid of it. You know, I think like that's what a lot of the public is saying. I think in a way there's that parallel. And also that now it's, as with Blair in 97, it's now spilled over into the political sphere where the Prime Minister is now being asked questions about this. You know it's a royal crisis

when Prime Minister's having to start commenting on this kind of things directly. So I think, I think that this could be a crisis for them if they don't handle it more carefully. But in some ways, Friday was supposed to be the moment where they're saying, I think the King is very reticent to take force full measures and his brother, said, well, actually, at this day,

we just have to do something. But I just worry that maybe, as we've discussed, the public was expecting them to go a bit further. and I think that's how it may well play out in the next few weeks. Obviously, I don't have a crystal ball, but I think there is, as you said, the political momentum towards a stripping approach rather than just an abeyance.

You know, there may be further moves to attempt to get him out of Royal Lodge just by sort of putting pressure on him. But I think that that's the risk they have is that they recognise it's an important moment, but maybe they don't quite, as the Queen didn't quite, recognise the kind of actions you need to take

to re-establish your moral authority with the public. I agree with you both. I think that this is a landmark moment for the monarchy. I think it is an ongoing, really difficult crisis for them that I don't think they've properly gripped yet. And I think if they don't, they risk permanently losing the public's trust. And given that Prince William is so focused on the constant phrase uses of having impact, but also of maintaining relevance and being modern.

And as he said recently, and as I was told and wrote in a piece, he wants to check the monarchy as fit for purpose. I think unless there are some very serious questions that are addressed and resolved after this, a lot of the public won't think that the monarchy is fit for purpose anymore. And that I think is the big concern for the king and for the future king going forwards. Well, my thanks to George Greenwood and Kaya Burgess of the Times for joining me on this week's episode of The Royals.

We've seen this week two royal stories, a king praying for unity in Rome and Virginia Geoffrey's testimony, and her posthumous memoir that's reignited this story and set the events of this week in motion. Well, that's it for this week's episode. Kate's away at the moment, but if you've got thoughts on this week's events or just want to tell us how you think the monarchy can regain public trust, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us at the royals at the times.co.uk. And Casey in Maine has written in saying how much she enjoys learning, this is what she said, more about the behind the scenes of the British monarchy and the government and current events and how the family operates. But I hope Jordan Kaya, I've been able to do a little bit of that for you today and I've really loved hearing your thoughts on the Royal Beat and the Strange World of Royal Porting. Thank you both. Thank you.