Following Buckingham Palace’s statement last month, the public will doubtless have concluded that the former Prince Andrew would lose his title of Prince and his peerage as a duke, as well as his other honours and dignities (I refer to him hereafter as ‘Andrew’, which sounds less jarring than Mr Mountbatten Windsor).
The opening words of the statement were: ‘His Majesty has today initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew.’ I assume, but do not know, that the king has exercised his undoubted prerogative powers to withdraw the honorific of ‘His Royal Highness’ and the title of Prince, and cancel his two knighthoods (of the Garter and the Royal Victorian Order). Anyone reading the statement would inevitably conclude that his dukedom was also being formally removed, especially as the earlier statement had already indicated that he had decided no longer to use the title.
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