It has been uncovered in recent days that Queen Elizabeth II has been privately funding the legal battle of Prince Andrew in his sexual abuse case. The Duke of York, who has been accused of child sex abuse by Virginia Giuffre, at first denied all allegations including that he had even met the accuser, however, pictures soon came out of the two together when Giuffre was just 17. In an eerie dark corridor, Andrew is seen with his arm around the waist of a young Giuffre with Ghislaine Maxwell in the background, the wife of the late Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein died in jail after being found to have been running a child sex trafficking ring on one of his private islands. It was discovered that Epstein used the island to get in good favour with A-list celebrities and the wider aristocracy, and the list of big names he could’ve exposed was what many believed was the motive behind his mysterious death. The haunting photo of Andrew with Giuffre and Maxwell seems to be yet another example of Epstein’s scheme.
The idea of the monarchy being involved in such atrocious crimes came as a surprise to many, an institution that had always claimed to have such strong values and morality had stooped to such a disgusting and low level. Many defenders of the Queen and wider royal family tried to play it off as an exception; that Prince Andrew was a bad apple, and the monarchy had no responsibility for his actions individually.
This point has been so thoroughly diminished by news broken of the Queen’s involvement in his defence. Not only is the monarch spending millions of pounds on the defence of an all-but convicted sexual abuser and paedophile, but is utilising her public funds and position to do so. The monarchy is a tax-payer funded operation, meaning the Queen is using the money from hard-working citizens to protect the vapid reputation of her and her estranged son.
Although this sequence of events has surprised many, the truth is that the history of the monarchy vastly contradicts the reputation it seeks to portray. What has taken place is hundreds of years of brutal colonisation and plundering of the global south, as well as imposing tyranny and poverty upon the people of Britain for the crown’s own benefit. Although we are led to believe that the monarchy’s dictatorial powers, which allowed them to commit such atrocities, are no longer intact, their influence and power still hold strong.
The queen is head of state in 15 countries outside of Britain, has the power to deny bills from turning into laws because her signature is necessary for them to pass, and can appoint lords to parliament to write legislation without a democratic election. On top of this, the crown has accumulated vast amounts of wealth through property ownership to the point where it runs more like a business than a government body. This corruption clearly lies outside of a few bad apples and remains the purpose rather than the exception to the monarchy’s actions.
The perception that the Queen is ‘one of the good ones’ and is a charitable and neutral arbiter in British politics is a false one. The backhand funding of such a nefarious cause is yet another example of the monarchy’s parasitic effect on Britain, and will hopefully serve as a catalyst for their expulsion from power.
Japhy Barrera
