There is not a lot to rejoice for the birthday boy Prince Andrew…

At one time, Prince Andrew had all of it. 

Not simply the Queen’s favorite son, he was a naval officer and embellished struggle hero whose dashing appears made him the ‘Playboy Prince’ – one in all Britain’s most eligible males.

Recently, nonetheless, the Duke of York has develop into higher identified for probably the most extraordinary falls from grace ever skilled by a member of the Royal Family.

Today, he turns 64. But it isn’t clear how a lot celebration there shall be at Royal Lodge, his grand residence in Windsor Great Park.  

Andrew’s ill-advised affiliation with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein led him to be stripped of his royal patronages and navy affiliations, and to his compelled retreat from public life. 

In 2015, Virginia Giuffre (previously Roberts) claimed in a lawsuit that she had been made by Epstein to have intercourse with Prince Andrew on three separate events when she was 17.

Later, in 2021, Giuffre filed a lawsuit in opposition to the prince over the alleged encounters. He denied the claims repeatedly, however in 2022, settled the case – whereas making no admission – with a payoff to Giuffre. 

The Prince has strenuously denied all improper doing and continues to take action. There is concept that he had been underneath stress to settle in order to not overshadow the Platinum Jubilee of his late mom, the Queen, that very same 12 months.

His fame, nonetheless, stays in tatters.

The Epstein affair is way from the primary time Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s third baby has discovered himself on the centre of controversy.

Here, on his sixty fourth birthday, Mail Online appears again over his life.

Born on 19 February 1960 at Buckingham Palace, Andrew Albert Christian Edward was the was the primary baby born to a reigning monarch in 103 years.

For the primary 22 years of his life – till the delivery of Prince William – he was the second in line to the throne: the spare to Prince Charles’s inheritor, enabling him to get pleasure from a freedom by no means out there to his brother.

After his training at Heatherdown Preparatory School and Gordonstoun in Scotland, the latter famously loathed by Charles throughout his personal time there, he adopted in his father’s footsteps and joined the Navy in 1979.

In 1981, he achieved his childhood dream of changing into a pilot when he acquired his ‘wings’ and the very best pilot award from Prince Philip.

In April 1982, he was despatched to the Falkland Islands as a part of the Royal Navy job pressure tasked with evicting Argentine invaders from the British territory, chopping a courageous, adventurous determine as a helicopter pilot through the 10-week struggle.

It was for a very daring type of mission that Andrew turned well-known: ‘decoying’ enemy anti-ship missiles. By the time Britain was victorious, inflicting the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s approval scores to soar, Andrew had develop into a nationwide hero, incomes the nickname Randy Andy because of his liaisons with a string of lovely ladies together with the actress Koo Stark.

Soon after, Prince Andrew met Sarah Ferguson. Though they’d identified one another since they had been youngsters as a result of Fergie’s father, retired military main Ronald, had performed polo collectively once they had been youngsters, and her father was additionally the polo supervisor for Prince Charles, it was Princess Diana who arrange her brother-in-law with the vivacious red-head in 1985.

‘We had been made to sit down subsequent to one another,’ Andrew mentioned of Diana’s matchmaking throughout their engagement interview. ‘It was at Ascot, because it had been, that the entire thing took off.’

Andrew and Fergie had been engaged simply 9 months later, and in July 1986 they had been married at Westminster Abbey and given the titles of the Duke and Duchess of York by the Queen.

They had two youngsters collectively, Princess Beatrice, born in August of 1988, and Princess Eugenie, born in March of 1990.

However, the wedding was quickly beset by troubles, essentially the most memorable of which concerned footage of Fergie having her toes sucked by American businessman John Bryan being splashed over the entrance pages of the newspapers in 1992.

Later, she mentioned of that 12 months, which the Queen dubbed her ‘annus horribilis’: ‘From early on that year, Andrew and I had been discussing a separation. Not because we’d stopped caring for each other, however as a result of I had reached the tip of my royal rope.’

They divorced in 1996, however stay near at the present time, even sharing a house at Royal Lodge in Windsor.

After leaving lively navy service in 2001, Prince Andrew turned the UK’s particular consultant for worldwide commerce and funding, however his 10 years within the function generated a substantial amount of controversy.

His associations with corrupt politicians in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tunisia, Libya and Turkmenistan raised issues.

His judgment was questioned after he held conferences with Libyan chief Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saif, and when he entertained the son-in-law of Tunisia’s ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali at Buckingham Palace.

His relations with Timor Kulibayev, son-in-law of the president of Kazakhstan, had been additionally scrutinised after Mr Kulibayev bought the duke’s Sunninghill Park residence for £3 million greater than its £12 million asking value in 2007.

He additionally turned generally known as ‘Air Miles Andy’ after spending hundreds flying in all places by helicopter, usually managing to work a go to to the golf course into his working journeys.

Indeed, it was usually questioned what precisely the prince was doing on all these international jaunts. Simon Wilson, Britain’s deputy head of mission in Bahrain from 2001 to 2005, wrote within the Daily Mail that the duke was ‘more commonly known among the British diplomatic community in the Gulf as HBH: His Buffoon Highness.’

In 2010, Fergie needed to apologise for a ‘serious lapse in judgement’ after she was uncovered by a News of the World sting operation by Mazher Mahmood, the ‘fake sheikh’, by which she promised to acquire entry to her former husband in return for £500,000.

The following 12 months, Andrew’s commerce envoy profession got here to a halt following the revelation that he was buddies with the American financier Epstein, who was sentenced to 18 months in jail in 2008 for soliciting a minor for prostitution.

Photographs of the 2 strolling in Central Park surfaced — after Epstein had served his time in jail. It was later revealed that Andrew had beforehand stayed at Epstein’s houses in Florida and Manhattan.

Following Epstein’s suicide in August 2019, the duke determined to offer a ‘no holds barred’ interview to BBC’s Newsnight about his former friendship with the convicted intercourse offender. It was an unmitigated catastrophe.

He denied ever assembly Giuffre, providing a sequence of weird excuses to exhibit why her claims he had intercourse together with her had been false, together with that he was not capable of sweat, that he was in Pizza Express in Woking, and that he had a bent to be ‘too honourable’.

It has been reported that, failing to understand the interview had been a disaster,  Prince Andrew had initially been happy along with his efficiency.

 But his phrases opened the door to Giuffre’s authorized motion in opposition to him, which was settled, apparently along with his mom’s cash, in 2022. 

Devastatingly for him, it was with the Queen’s approval that he was stripped of his royal duties and titles.

Following the Queen’s dying and Charles’s accession to the throne, it appears even much less doubtless Andrew will regain a outstanding public place throughout the household. The King and Prince William are each mentioned to be decided that, whereas he stays a part of teh household, there isn’t a means again to royal duties.

There has additionally been hypothesis that the King needs Andrew to depart his residence of greater than 20 years, Royal Lodge.

More current studies, nonetheless, recommend the brothers have reached an settlement which can allow Andrew and Sarah to remain within the 30-room mansion.

The Yorks have loads on their plates . 

Last summer season, Sarah was handled for breast most cancers, after which in January, she was identified with malignant melanoma, an aggressive type of pores and skin most cancers. She continues to assist her former husband, lately saying that she promised the Queen previous to her dying that she could be there for him.

The pair have three grandchildren: Princess Beatrice’s child woman Sienna Mapelli Mozzi, born in September 2021, and Princess Eugenie’s two youngsters, August Brooksbank, born in February 2021, and Ernest, born in May 2023.

Their focus will little doubt be on Sarah’s well being within the coming months, but when Prince Andrew hoped the mud was beginning to choose his shame, that’s unlikely: Scoop, the Netflix drama based mostly on his Newsnight interview, is ready to display screen within the spring.