Gruesome days for the Windsors, but never underestimate their ruthless drive to survive

Andrew Rawnsley

- 

Love them or loathe them, the royal family have a remarkable record of survival. Since the Restoration of 1660, the other crowned heads of Europe have been guillotined, shot, exiled, evicted or downsized. The British iteration of hereditary monarchy has swerved that fate while managing to endure the arrival of universal suffrage, the end of empire and the disintegration of deference.

Its impulse for self-preservation was evident in the response to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office. “The law must take its course,” intoned a hand-washing statement from King Charles that failed to acknowledge that the accused is his younger brother. The monarch offered investigators “full and wholehearted support and cooperation”.

The strategy is to create a firebreak between the former Duke of York and the rest of the Windsors. It suits them just fine for everyone to boggle at that image of the fallen prince slumped, wild-eyed, in the back seat of a car as he was driven away from police custody. Monarchists are supportively dismissing the notion that this is a full-fat constitutional crisis on the grounds that he has already been stripped of his titles and never had any prospect of occupying the throne. Legislation removing him from the line of succession would be purely symbolic. What makes the Windsors most nervous is the fear that Andrew will contaminate the family brand. The potential for that to happen has some republicans salivating that this could topple the entire edifice.