Royal watchers learned in October 2025 that King Charles III stripped his younger brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor - formerly known as Prince Andrew - of his royal titles and evicted him from his lavish home. The former prince's spectacular fall from grace has been tied to his friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Mountbatten-Windsor told BBC's Newsnight in 2019 that he met Epstein through the disgraced financier's girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, though he denied any wrongdoing. (Epstein was convicted of procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute in 2008 and was later arrested on federal sex trafficking charges weeks before his death by suicide in August 2019. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking charges.) In that same 2019 interview, Mountbatten-Windsor insisted he did not regret his friendship with Epstein despite the damage to his reputation. "Now, [I] still [do] not [regret it] and the reason being is that the people that I met and the opportunities that I was given to learn either by him or because of him were actually very useful," Mountbatten Windsor told Newsnight. "He himself not, as it were, as close as you might think, we weren't that close. So therefore I mean, yes, I would go and stay in his house but that was because of his girlfriend, not because of him." King Charles Heckled Over Prince Andrew's Ties to the Late Jeffrey Epstein The fallout from Mountbatten-Windsor's 2019 interview led him to step back from his royal duties in November 2019, though he was eventually stripped of his titles by King Charles in October 2025 as continual revelations emerged. Keep scrolling for more about the way Charles and other royals reacted to Mountbatten-Windsor's friendship with Epstein. How Is Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor Connected to Jeffrey Epstein? Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor told BBC Newsnight host Emily Maitlis in a 2019 interview that he met Jeffrey Epstein through the convicted sex offender's former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. (Ghislaine's father, Robert Maxwell, was part of the media establishment in the U.K. as owner of the Daily Mirror and The London Evening News prior to his death at age 68 in 1991.) While Mountbatten-Windsor never faced criminal charges over his alleged involvement with Epstein, he was sued for sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress by Virginia Giuffre in 2021. Giuffre alleged that Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her to Mountbatten-Windsor following a night at Tramp nightclub in London in 2001. "I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever," Mountbatten-Windsor insisted to Newsnight. However, Mountbatten-Windsor reached a private settlement with Giuffre in 2022 after she sued him for sexual assault and battery. (He did not admit any fault as part of the settlement agreement though he agreed to make a substantial donation to Speak Out, Act, Reclaim, a charity supporting sex trafficking victims.) Mountbatten-Windsor claimed that he visited Epstein at his New York penthouse in December 2010 to formally end their friendship. At the time, Epstein had recently completed his 18-month prison sentence for procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute. "I have always ... ever since this has happened and since this has become, as it were, public knowledge that I was there, I've questioned myself as to why did I go and what was I doing and was it the right thing to do?" Mountbatten-Windsor told Newsnight. "Now, I went there with the sole purpose of saying to him that because he had been convicted, it was inappropriate for us to be seen together." Andrew and King Charles III in 2015 Peter Nicholls - WPA Pool /Getty Images Mountbatten-Windsor admitted that he'd had "a number of people counsel" him over whether it was appropriate to visit Epstein's home in the wake of his conviction. "I took the judgement call that, because this was serious, and I felt that doing it over the telephone was the chicken's way of doing it. I had to go and see him and talk to him," he said. He added, "I said to [Epstein] ... 'Look, because of what has happened, I don't think it is appropriate that we should remain in contact,' and by mutual agreement during that walk in the park we decided that we would part company and I left, I think it was the next day. To this day, I never had any contact with him from that day forward." His friendship with Epstein faced a new level of scrutiny when a paparazzi photo from Mountbatten-Windsor and Epstein's Central Park conversation was published by the New York Post in 2011. As a result of the scandal, Buckingham Palace announced in July 2011 that Mountbatten-Windsor had resigned as a U.K. trade envoy. Any attempt by Mountbatten-Windsor to put the scandal behind him with his 2019 Newsnight interview failed. The TV special only intensified coverage of the scandal, leading to Mountbatten-Windsor formally stepping back from his royal duties i