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As Counter-Currents’ Royal Correspondent, I feel it is time I weighed in on l’affaire de Andrew, formerly known as Prince. I knew that Andrew was bad years before any of this Epstein stuff came to light. Of all the senior royals, he was the one the staff seemed to hate most. “F— off,” he is supposed to have told one servant who was assigned to wake him up in the morning. Then there’s the small matter of his stuffed animals, estimated at between 40 and 70, depending on who you talk to. These must be arranged on his bed in a specific order, or Andrew reportedly has a royal fit.

Andrew and Fergie continued to live together for years after their divorce. My mother thought that was sweet, but they’re basically just a team of grifters. Fergie was caught selling access to Andrew long ago, and Andrew didn’t seem to care. His 2019 BBC 2 interview with Emily Maitlis showed that Andrew was not very bright. I described it at the time as “the most humiliating, senseless, and bizarre self-immolation of a British public figure since Jeremy Thorpe applied Vaseline to Norman ‘Bunnies’ Scott.”

Andrew lies badly. Very badly. Asked about the now notorious photograph of him, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Virginia Roberts Giuffre (who claims she was forced to have sex with the onetime Duke of York), Andrew said that it was a fake photo. Why? Because it was taken on the second floor of Ghislaine Maxwell’s house, and he’d never been to the second floor of her house. But as The Spectator asked, “How does he recognize an area of the house he has yet to visit?”

The first step in dealing with the Andrew calamity, initiated by his mother, was to remove him as a working royal. There has been a steady escalation since then, culminating in the revocation of all his titles, a step taken by his brother. When Diana divorced Charles, she lost her “HRH” style but remained a princess. Same with Fergie, who remained a duchess (and was also technically a princess). Andrew has now not only lost “HRH” but even the right to call himself a prince (or a duke). As the son of the Queen and Prince Philip, being a prince was Andrew’s birthright.

To my knowledge, this is absolutely unprecedented. It indicates that Charles is likely aware of more dirt on Andrew that hasn’t come out yet. And it must be pretty bad. Just the other day, Andrew was arrested and interrogated by the police on suspicion that he shared classified trade documents with Epstein. This was the first time a senior royal had been arrested since Charles I in 1647. This eventually led to Charles’s trial and beheading. Could a similar fate await Andrew? No, given that Britain abolished the death penalty decades ago. But I would nonetheless like to suggest how Andrew might go about cheating the proverbial hangman.

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At this point, the man has disgraced his family, his country, and the monarchy. There are now calls for Charles to abdicate in favor of William, based on the assumption that the King likely knew of Andrew’s misconduct for years and sought to cover it up. This is arguably the greatest crisis the royal family have faced since 1936, when King Edward VIII abdicated to marry a twice-divorced American woman who wasn’t even pretty. The silliness of Harry and Meaghan cannot compare to the scandal unleashed by Andrew, and, by all accounts, the royal family are very worried. Andrew might just bring down the monarchy. All because he required “inappropriate friends.” I almost sympathize with him. This has got to be a tremendous burden—if the man has a conscience.

There is a way, however, that Andrew can remove the burden and (theoretically) restore his honor: he should just go ahead and do it.

Doing it is an old custom in situations where a man was perceived to have lost his honor. There was, indeed, a time when this was expected of a gentleman. In the 1929 film version of Alfred Edward Woodley Mason’s novel The Four Feathers, the protagonist, an officer in the British army, is accused of cowardice. Hearing this news, his father is overcome with shame. He leaves his son a pistol as a strong hint of what he believes to be the only honorable course open to him. The son doesn’t use the pistol, however, and actually manages to redeem himself. It is hard to see how Andrew could redeem himself. He would need to cure cancer or something, and that’s just not in the cards.

Instead, he could do it. How does doing it restore a man’s honor, exactly? It’s very simple. If you’ve lost your honor, if you’ve fallen into disrepute and earned the contempt of other men, doing it is a way of showing that you are not willing to live in such circumstances. Doing it is a way that the dishonored show that, in the end, they place honor above all else. Such an extreme sacrifice for the sake of honor earns the admiration of most men, even if it does not remove the memory of what led a man to such an end in the first place.

A pistol is definitely the posh way to do it. Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria used a pistol. So did Prince Alfred of Edinburgh, Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. So did Adolf Friedrich VI, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. And Prince Joachim of Prussia. Ditto Prince Ludwig Rudolph of Hanover. Even Princess Sophie of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach used a pistol. These were all cousins of Andrew, and none had a better reason for doing it than he has.

Of course, if Andrew does do it, the alternative media will say that he didn’t do it and that it was actually done to him. British Intelligence will be blamed (after all, don’t they have a license to do it?). Or Mossad. Or Hillary Clinton. Andrew could get around this problem by doing it publicly. Perhaps he could go back on BBC 2 and do it in front of Emily Maitlis. Even then, people will believe it was AI.

Besides, I imagine Andrew will think it’s beneath his dignity to do it on camera. This is false, of course, since it seems there is very little that is beneath his dignity. One plan might be for Andrew to leave a handwritten note, and possibly also to tell a friend—if he has one. Even this, of course, is not a foolproof plan.

However Andrew does it, doing it might just take the heat off Charles and the rest of the family. I feel sorry for Andrew’s daughters, but they’re now being dragged through the mud as well. Ultimately, it would be a great relief for everyone concerned, including an entire nation and a commonwealth, if he just went ahead and did it.

If I were him, I would do it.