Disgraced ex-prince to lose honorary navy title

The United Kingdom's defense minister has said the former duke of York, now known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, will lose his honorary rank of vice-admiral in the Royal Navy as the fall-out about his close association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein continues.

Mountbatten Windsor, brother of King Charles III and the third child of the late Queen Elizabeth II, served in the navy for 22 years and saw active service as a helicopter pilot during the Falklands War in 1982.

He was given the honorary rank of vice-admiral in 2015 and retained it even after giving up other military honors in 2022 as the full extent of his relationship with Epstein began to emerge.

Epstein was a close associate of many of the world's richest and most powerful people, and in 2019 he was found dead in prison, where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Last month, a statement was issued on behalf of the king, saying Mountbatten Windsor's royal "style, titles and honors" were to be removed, and it was later announced he would be moving out of his royal accommodation.

"In general, the government has been guided by the decisions and judgments the king has made. In defense, it's exactly the same," minister John Healey told the BBC. "We've seen Andrew surrender the honorary positions he's had throughout the military, and guided again by the king, we are working now to remove that last remaining title of vice-admiral that he has."

When questioned about what might happen to the medals Mountbatten Windsor had won for active service, Healey said "just as with his vice-admiral rank and title, we would be guided by the decisions the king makes".

In 2001, a woman called Virginia Guiffre claimed she had been trafficked by Epstein and that, aged 17, she had had sex with Mountbatten Windsor, which he denied, but in 2022, following further damaging revelations about his ties to Epstein, he settled a civil court case with her for an unspecified amount, widely reported to be around 12 million pounds ($15.7 million).

In April 2025, aged 41, Giuffre took her own life, with her family issuing a statement saying: "Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking … in the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight."

A posthumous memoir titled Nobody's Girl went into detail about her experiences, including repeating the allegations against Mountbatten Windsor, saying he "believed having sex with me was his birthright".

His public disgrace does not seem to have drawn the desired line under the saga, however, as emails published over the weekend show that Mountbatten Windsor was still in touch with Epstein in 2010, after the US financier had come out of prison where he had been on charges of soliciting prostitution.

One email reportedly said: "I have no immediate plans to drop by New York but I think I should at some stage soon … it would be good to catch up in person."