Michael D. Shear

Yeah, it backfired spectacularly.

If the point was for him to explain away the photo that everybody had seen, it didn't work at all.

Your response?

He said he had no recollection of meeting her, but couldn't explain this photo that was taken with his arm around her waist.

He seemed nervous throughout the interview.

He disputed accounts that the interviewer offered about meeting Ms.

Dufresne in a club in London.

When the interview asked about Virginia Dufresne's claim that he had sweated profusely while they danced, he went on an odd tangent about how he couldn't have sweated while dancing with her because he had a medical condition that made that impossible.

It was one of those interviews where, by the end of it, people actually thought he was lying rather than telling the truth, and it became clear that the effort to rehabilitate his image, to clear his name, had not worked at all.

Because of the public outrage, both globally and especially here in the UK, Prince Andrew decided to step away from his royal duties, essentially saying that he was no longer going to be as front and center the way the king and the princes normally are.

Mm-hmm.

And so that's where things stood for several years until 2025, Virginia Dufresne commits suicide and her memoir is released posthumously by her family members.

And in it, it portrays Andrew's behavior in a much more detailed and damning way.

King Charles at that point strips the prince of his title, the Duke of York, says he can't be called a prince anymore, and ultimately kicks the prince out of his home that he'd lived in on the property of Windsor Castle for about 20 years.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, he was clearly embarrassed by all of the press, but he's still, at the end of the day, eighth in line to the throne, and the consequences were mostly social consequences, not anything else.

Right.

I think that, as you said, there were a lot of details about how close the two men were and the number of times that they were together, both at parties and other places.

But I think the most damning thing was yet another photo.

And this one was of Andrew appearing to kind of kneel over a woman who was lying on the floor.