Scandal is no stranger to the House of Windsor, but it has made a flagrant return with Andrew’s involvement with the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Yet the institution will manage this scandal and emerge with enough legitimacy and pomp to resume normal operations. Which turmoil-inducing happenings have forced the Crown into survival mode? This timeline traces a century of royal scandals — a chain of impropriety that defines Britain’s most famous family.
“I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility … without the help and support of the woman I love,” announces King Edward VIII in a BBC radio broadcast as he abdicates the throne to marry Pennsylvanian Wallis Simpson. This decision stuns Britain, destabilizes the Monarchy and stirs stories of Edward’s fascist sympathies. Simpson is twice divorced; the Church of England does not allow marriage to divorced people. The scandal sets the tone for future monarchical dramas.
Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, becomes infamous when her divorce trial reveals 13 Polaroid photographs of her wearing only a string of pearls, engaged in oral sex with a naked man. The divorce judge calls her “a highlysexed woman who has ceased to be satisfied with normal sexual activities.” Years later, newswriter Naomi Gordon calls the case “one of the earliest examples of revenge porn, slut-shaming and celebrity hacking.”
Queen Elizabeth II’s younger sister, Princess Margaret, is 43 and married when she meets landscape gardener Roddy Llewellyn, 15 years her junior. They start a relationship which paparazzi expose during their vacation to the private Caribbean island of Mustique. On February 22, 1976, British newspaper News of the World publishes photographs of the couple, sparking unprecedented media coverage of the private life of a member of the royal family. The coverage will expand and intensify.
Ferguson separates from Prince Andrew after six years of marriage. Shortly after announcing this, she gets photographed having her toes sucked by a “financial advisor,” and later runs up debts, which she asks “supreme friend” Jeffrey Epstein to help settle. In 1996, she shocks the Palace with a confessional Oprah interview. In a 2010 sting operation, an undercover reporter catches her offering to sell access to Andrew for £500,000 (over $660,000). In 2025, seven charities drop her for her associations with Epstein.
New Idea, an Australian publication owned by Australian-American media mogul Rupert Murdoch, publishes extracts from an intimate phone call between Prince Charles and socialite Camilla Parker Bowles from 1989. Notoriously, Charles says he wants to be Camilla’s tampon, to which she replies, “Oh, what a wonderful idea.” Murdoch’s British publications run similar stories. This is 1993, 17 years after photos of the couple were published without Camilla’s permission. Concerns about public figures’ privacy are growing.
Those are Princess Diana’s words in a BBC interview. Her marriage to Prince Charles was depicted as a fairytale in 1981, but has now descended into jealousy, affairs and public recriminations. Camillagate and Diana’s confessions turn the royal family into a tabloid serial drama, changing public perception. Diana has humanized royals, presenting herself as a globally-loved but flawed figure locked in a loveless marriage.
After years of separated living and badly-kept secret relationships, Princess Diana and Prince Charles finalize their divorce on August 28. The terms allow Diana to keep living at Kensington Palace as they share custody of their two sons, William and Harry, who were born respectively in 1982 and 1984. Their marriage has lasted 15 years, many of them tumultuous.
Princess Diana shares a romantic link with Dodi Fayed, an Egyptian filmmaker whom she met at a polo game in 1986. They vacation together in southern France on a yacht owned by Dodi’s father, Mohamed Al-Fayed, owner of the Harrods department store in London. The paparazzi relentlessly pursue the couple here and everywhere. Attempting to escape, Diana and Dodi die in an infamous car accident in Paris on August 31. Diana is 36, Fayed 42.
Virginia Giuffre, an American woman who alleges Epstein trafficked her when she was a teenager, accuses Prince Andrew of sexual assault. Andrew agrees to a BBC television interview that ends up going horribly awry. He insists he has “no recollection” of meeting Giuffre and clumsily defends himself, claiming ignorance of Epstein’s “strange and unpleasant activities.” He says: “If you try to forget, it’s very difficult to try and forget a positive action, and I do not remember anything.”
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle renounce their royal titles and move to California. They buy a home, launch a production company and sign a deal with streaming company Netflix. In a 2021 Oprah interview, Meghan alleges palace racism. Author Peggy Noonan writes in The Wall Street Journal: “It was history, a full-bore assault on an institution, the British monarchy, that has endured more than 1,000 years.”
On December 2, 2021, Meghan wins a privacy case against British publication Mail on Sunday.
As a result of the public fallout over his associations with Epstein, on October 30, King Charles III strips Andrew of his titles and ejects him from his royal home. The former prince is effectively ostracized by the Crown. This coincides with the posthumous publication of Giuffre’s memoir (she died April 25). Andrew continues to deny her allegations, though in 2022, he reached an out-of-court settlement with her. The Andrew/Epstein case is arguably the Monarchy’s gravest scandal since the 1936 abdication.
Credits
Written by Ellis Cashmore
Edited by Lee Thompson-Kolar
Produced by Lokendra Singh
Images courtesy of YouTube and Shutterstock
[Ellis Cashmore is the author of Celebrity Culture, now in its third edition.]