Mostly is jut a way to distance herself and the crown institution from an alleged child molester while also public punishing him? I dont know who is this guy or what he did beyond some very ligth skimming here.
He's Queen Elizabeth II's second son (third child, but I don't think the recent revoking of
male primogeniture put Anne back ahead of him 'in line'). If the throne cannot be passed down to Charles or his sons or their various children (I presume there is no difficulties with Harry's ducking out of Royal Duties?), Andrew would probably be the next possible recipient, but he's now a long way from being the "spare to the heir" that he would have been in the early '80s.
As with many of the current extant members of the House Of Windsor (including then-Princess Elizabeth) he has been in the military, and surprisingly active. In his case was flying helicopters in the Falklands Conflict ("Las Malvinas", in case you prefer, but that was part of the conflict) and not in a wrapped-in-cotton-wool way. Harry (spare to the heir's heir) did stints in Afghanistan including helicopters, so a bit of a pattern. Younger brother Edward (third, behind Charles and Andrew) didn't take to that life so well, but most seem to have been serious about that dedication.
That aside, it's obviously a big hereditary thing going on. Though the Queen's longevity has meant that there's a lot of direct heirs and heirs of (...) heirs sitting in line, they're obviously in on the ground floor of a big dynastic heap of social and financial privilege (though the governments of recent times always seem to be the beneficieries of the Royal Estates and only reluctantly hand back bits and pieces as a sop to not being labelled utter republicans), and even if nobody expects Andrew to ever be crowned (even before the current fuss), I imagine he's had a target on his back that every schmoozer and grifter with even an ounce of social access has been willing to take good aim at to further their own goals.
I have no idea if Andrew (or the rest) have specific predilictions that they happily indulged, but pecadillos (and other small and flexibly-arrmoured insectivores) would have been easy to service. There are certainly 'disfunctional' aspects to the Queen's childrens' lives, with only Edward among them not having divorced their first spouse, and Andrew didn't remarry after Fergie. Seems slightly over the usual rate of broken marriages, but most marriages aren't engineered and/or destroyed in the full glare of the press.
There
is a photo of Andrew smiling at the camera with someone, it turns out, who had been sexually trafficked (underage, at that) by Epstein the disgraced-then-suicided film guy and Maxwell the 'socialite' daughter of Robert Maxwell[1]. How many photos were taken of people who met Andrew, I wouldn't know, and on the basis of the photo setting alone I would not see anything wrong. Smart-casual dress, by all parties (at a party?) and unable to establish how fleeting or intimate this meeting became, if Andrew genuinely can't remember this one encounter then I wouldn't be surprised.
But the allegation is that she was there to 'service' him, on multiple occasions. Not itself a problem, she doesn't look to me like 'jail bait', even if she technically was - and, without victim-blaming, I'm not sure you could tell the difference between a genuine young lady enjoying the start of her adult life and a misguided/groomed not-quite-adult in over her head. There's always going to be a differential of power, between an nth-in-line-to-the-throne and anybody not there entirely by choice, but it doesn't mean intentional exploitation. Nor does it rule it out.
...anyway, this possibly distracting photograph aside, there are allegations. The proof behind the allegations is somewhat vaporous and maybe would never suffice for a criminal prosecution, but this is being tried as a civil case. It was preceded by many (failed) legal arguments and other attempts to avoid the case being heard that might be considered laughable if the consequences of their failure weren't technically far worse for any truly innocent man. The papers couldn't be served, maybe they were, yes they were, but the case wasn't competant, maybe it was, and apparently it was, the accuser had not rights to accuse, but she did, even though... It's a mess, and it doesn't help the whole 'trial by media' thing (upon either party) that
hopefully plays little part in the courtroom decision-making, but I'm not sure there won't be imported prejudices on one or both sides, and then (whatever the verdict) there'll be cries of "foul!" by those viewing proceedings from afar who then think it went the wrong way.
Right now, it seems one of the primary attack-points is to try to get (or, rather, be unable to get) proof about whether Andrew "could not sweat" at the time of the alleged indident(s), something he said was the case in an earlier media interview precisely to counter the accuser's story that he was all sweaty during an alleged incident. It sounds so ridicous that I'm probably inclined to believe it (or at least that he believes it) and I haven't heard anything about trying to counter the claims based upon an apparently particularly memorable visit to a Pizza Express restaurant...
What certainly has happened is that Maxwell ran in the same social circles as Andrew (and many others, who have so far escaped being quite so highlighted, potentially because less lucratively to do so) and it is legal fact that she had brokered 'niche' sexual partners to certain people, but the direct overlap is far from proven. If it happened, I'm sure it will have already been covered up in various ways, if it did not then the mere claims of it could still be so easily made in an attempt to leverage 'justice'. Perhaps both at the same time, but that doesn't make it all square and fair...
[1] Press Baron and general dodgy guy in various (mostly) financial ways, who suffered a jumped-/pushed-/fell-from-his-yacht fatal 'incident' that is still ripe for much speculation. One thinks that with a father like that, his daughter had all the psychological disadvantages of a rich-dynasty upbringing with very little of the benefits. Until fairly recently, though, most attention would have been on his sons and heirs to the media business. She seems to have been a 'someone you know in the right circles' person. Or 'wrong circles', maybe.
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