RICHARD EDEN: Prince Harry or Prince Andrew could still become our monarch if disaster strikes. Now courtiers tell me why King Charles won't act
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Prince Andrew is considered such an embarrassment to the Royal Family that Buckingham Palace insiders briefed the Press this week that he should ‘do the decent thing’ and voluntarily withdraw from public view over Christmas. No sooner had these insiders’ opinions been published than the Duke of York said he would not be joining the rest of his family at Sandringham at all following the fallout from the so-called ‘Chinese Spy’ scandal.
![[The Duke of York and King Charles together at the late Queen's Diamond Jubilee ceremony at St Paul's Cathedral in London]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/19/11/93310207-14209625-image-m-28_1734609373726.jpg)
His ex-wife Sarah, Duchess of York, whose presence after a 30-year absence during the public walk from church on Christmas Day had been considered so significant last year, would also stay away from the private Norfolk retreat. The couple’s daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, had, reportedly already decided that they would spend the festive season with their in-laws rather than with the Windsors.
Then it emerged the Duke and Duchess had also pulled out of King Charles’s pre-Christmas private lunch for extended family and friends at Buckingham Palace today. Yet, despite all of this, Andrew still holds a prestigious and potentially significant role in the monarchy.
Just like his nephew Prince Harry, who also ‘stepped back’ from royal duties, Andrew is a Counsellor of State. That means he is one of seven members of the Royal Family legally entitled to deputise for the King, who is still undergoing cancer treatment, ‘in the event that [he] cannot undertake his official duties as Sovereign on a temporary basis due to illness or absence abroad’.
