The British Crown’s Entitlement Problem

Dismantle the Media

It’s hard to look at the British monarchy right now without seeing a glaring, uncomfortable pattern. For all the pageantry, the golden carriages, and the carefully curated public relations, the men at the top of the royal family tree have left behind a messy, decades-long paper trail of deeply problematic behavior.

When you strip away the titles and the royal deference, it paints a picture of an exclusive boys’ club that frequently operates as though the rules of basic human decency—and in some cases, the actual law of the land—simply don’t apply to them.

Let’s start with the most obvious and immediate elephant in the room: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. On February 19, 2026—his 66th birthday—the unthinkable actually happened. For the first time in nearly four centuries, a senior British royal was placed under arrest. Police swept into the King’s private Sandringham estate, loaded Andrew into an unmarked car, and held him for 11 hours of questioning at Aylsham police station.

The media has spent years focusing on his horrific ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the devastating allegations of sexual abuse. But the reason Andrew was actually put in handcuffs this week comes down to an undeniable, black-and-white paper trail of arrogance. He was arrested on suspicion of “misconduct in public office.”

When the U.S. Justice Department dumped millions of unsealed Epstein files in January, investigators found emails from 2010. During his time as a U.K. special trade envoy, Andrew was allegedly forwarding highly sensitive, confidential government documents directly to Epstein. We are talking about official state reports from visits to Vietnam, Singapore, and Hong Kong, plus a confidential brief on “high-value commercial opportunities” in Afghanistan. In some cases, he was allegedly firing these state secrets off to a known sex trafficker just five minutes after receiving them from his own staff.

It is a staggering abuse of power. It wasn’t just a lapse in judgment; it was the behavior of a man who genuinely believed his royal status made him untouchable. He felt comfortable treating global state secrets like casual gossip for his billionaire friends because, in his world, consequences were things that happened to commoners.

In the hours after the arrest, Buckingham Palace scrambled to do damage control. King Charles III released a highly formal statement, noting his “deepest concern” and declaring with absolute authority: “Let me state clearly: the law must take its course.”

It’s exactly what a constitutional monarch is supposed to say. But if you have paid any attention to the royal family over the last forty years, the King playing the role of the infallible moral arbiter rings profoundly hollow. Where does a man like Andrew learn that kind of staggering arrogance? You don’t have to look very far up the family tree.

While King Charles is currently demanding accountability, his own hands are far from clean. During his marriage to Princess Diana, Charles carried on an open secret of an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. Marriages fail every day, and human relationships are complex. But Charles didn’t just have a failing marriage; he operated with a cold, institutional entitlement. He essentially decided that the vows he made in front of a global audience simply didn’t apply to him.

He expected his young wife to endure the humiliation silently, utilizing the massive, intimidating power of the palace machine to isolate Diana while he did exactly as he pleased. It was a glaring lack of respect for his wife, born out of the absolute, unshakeable privilege of knowing he was going to be King regardless of his personal conduct. For Charles to now stand as the ultimate pillar of justice ignores the reality that he, too, spent much of his adult life acting like the rules were meant for everyone else.

If you thought this toxic entitlement was just a problem with the older generation, the younger royals have proven they are entirely capable of the same tone-deaf arrogance.

Take Prince Harry in 2005. He decided it would be a hilarious idea to attend a “native and colonial” themed costume party dressed as a member of the Nazi Afrika Korps, complete with a bright red swastika armband. He has since apologized profusely, framing it as the biggest mistake of his life. But we have to talk about the sheer lack of baseline empathy and historical awareness it takes to actually put that armband on, look in the mirror, and walk out the door.

It treated the monumental trauma of the Holocaust as a casual frat-party punchline. It showed a staggering lack of respect for the millions who suffered and died, proving once again that the royal bubble can completely insulate its residents from basic common sense and human decency.

When you line these incidents up collectively—a deeply offensive costume, an arrogant public affair that tore a family apart, and now a historic criminal arrest linked to a notorious sex trafficker—you have to ask the obvious question. Why is there such a fundamental lack of respect for women, for the public, and for the dignity of others across two generations of royal men?

The answer isn’t a mystery; it’s baked into the very foundation of the institution.

From the moment these men take their first breath, they are raised in an absolute bubble of systemic protection. Their every need is catered to by a fleet of staff. They are taught from childhood that their bloodline makes them inherently superior to the rest of the population. When you are raised in a system where the official family motto of “never complain, never explain” is weaponized to bury your mistakes, and where an army of fixers and courtiers exists solely to smooth over your messes, entitlement isn’t an accident. It’s the entire point of the system.

The lack of respect we’ve seen from these men isn’t a sudden anomaly or a string of bad luck. It is the predictable, inevitable result of a system that has historically shielded its male members from the everyday realities—and consequences—of the real world. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s 11 hours in a police holding cell may be the first time the law has pierced that golden bubble in four hundred years, but the cultural rot that put him there has been festering at the heart of the monarchy for decades.