'He Still Thinks He's Anointed': Expert Details Ex-Prince Andrew's 'Delusion' After Arrest

The historic arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on 19 February 2026 has pulled back the curtain on a man royal experts describe as 'dangerously out of touch' with his new reality.

Taken into custody on his 66th birthday, the man formerly known as Prince Andrew was questioned for 11 hours by Thames Valley Police over allegations of misconduct in public office.

The probe centres on 'explosive' documents from the 30 January 2026 Epstein file release, which reportedly show Andrew forwarding confidential government trade reports to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during his tenure as a UK trade envoy.

Despite being stripped of his HRH style, his Prince title, and his Dukedom by King Charles III in November 2025, Andrew reportedly remains convinced that his 'anointed' status should have shielded him from the law and regards the royal family's retreat from him as 'deeply unfair,' according to royal writer Andrew Lownie.

Lownie, author of Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, claims Andrew's primary emotion is not remorse, but a sense of deep unfairness.

Prince Andrew And The Collapse Of Protection

Lownie's portrait is not subtle and it is not kind. 'He still thinks he's anointed, that it's deeply unfair people have turned on him,' he told People, in the line that gives the whole episode its sting. It suggests a man less bewildered by scandal itself than by the fact that the old buffers, the family, the deference, the machinery of royal insulation, no longer seem willing or able to save him.​

That sense of grievance matters because it goes beyond embarrassment. Lownie describes Andrew as someone struggling with the loss of status after years inside what he (biographer) called a life of pampering, where identity and title were so closely fused that one could barely survive without the other.

'He has been pampered all the way through his life, in this bubble,' Lownie said. 'Status is everything to him, it's his only sense of identity.'​

Andrew Still Measuring Life By Rank

Even so, the family dimension comes through clearly in Lownie's account, in which he says Andrew believed he and those around him could continue operating quietly, away from scrutiny, and that this confidence now looks badly misplaced.

'They thought they'd be able to operate like this under the radar,' Lownie said, before adding an even harsher judgement about the exploitation of royal status.​

Sarah Ferguson appears in that frame as well. The scrutiny of Andrew's former wife and her ties to Epstein and Maxwell has only deepened the sense that this was never a scandal confined to a single disgraced royal.

That broader shadow, Lownie argues, now hangs over Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, who remain public figures while carrying the burden of their parents' notoriety.​

His description of the sisters is one of the few moments in the piece that feels less like palace analysis and more like family wreckage. 'They're caught between a rock and a hard place over loyalty to their parents and their future,' he said.

That is probably the cleanest line in the whole story because it captures what the monarchy often tries to conceal: that scandal does not stop neatly at the person who caused it.​

What remains is an image of Prince Andrew as a man still reading from an old script while everyone else has moved on. The titles have gone, the patience has thinned and, if Lownie is right, the grievance remains intact. For someone raised to believe status was the natural order of things, that may be the sharpest humiliation of all.

As of now, Andrew remains under investigation. Legal experts warn that if charged and convicted of misconduct in public office, the former prince could face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, though a shorter custodial term is more likely for a first-time offender.