Prince Charles asserts his influence.
LONDON — The British monarchy is at a turning point.
The 93-year-old Queen Elizabeth II is fading into history as her 71-year-old son and heir, Prince Charles, moves to assert his control.
The fierce backlash over Prince Andrew’s television interview about his friendship with the disgraced financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has thrown a harsh spotlight on the queen’s management of the Firm, as insiders often refer to the royal family. It has also dramatized how Prince Charles has effectively assumed the role of monarch-in-waiting.
Prince Charles has long pushed for a more streamlined royal family, with fewer members carrying out official duties and drawing from the public purse. But the Prince Andrew debacle is the most visible sign yet that the shift has begun to happen.
Valentine Low, who covers the royal family for The Times of London, said that under the queen, “there are all these different entities in the family, and they operate in silos.”
“Andrew is a minor silo,” he said. “But you occasionally get a crisis where you need leadership from the center.”
After the backlash that followed the BBC interview, in which Prince Andrew showed no empathy for the teenage victims of Mr. Epstein and offered dubious defenses of his own conduct, Prince Andrew issued a statement in which he declared that he had asked his mother to let him “step back from public duties for the foreseeable future, and she has given her permission.”
The episode laid bare a paradox: While Buckingham Palace has prepared for the death of the queen and the accession of Prince Charles, its handling of the Prince Andrew affair shows that the royal family is less prepared to handle the problems that keep coming up.
However unsavory Prince Andrew’s history with Mr. Epstein, royal observers said it did not pose a dire threat. Except for potential legal exposure in an investigation of Mr. Epstein, Prince Andrew is likely to vanish into memory.
“They’ve moved swiftly to sort it out in the coldblooded and ruthless way they have,” Mr. Low said.
The crisis has erupted at a time when Britain’s political leaders, paralyzed by Brexit, are in little position to help. Simon Jenkins, a columnist and author, likened Prince Andrew’s travails to a scandal involving a Hollywood celebrity. He said it was “of absolutely no consequence” in a country that will soon be going to the polls in an election that will have profound consequences for its place in the world.
What Buckingham Palace needs to worry more about, royal watchers said, is Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. Reports of strain between him and his brother, Prince William, and of Meghan’s struggles to adapt to her new life, are more damaging because these young royals symbolize the House of Windsor’s future, not its messy past.
“For them to be breaking away from the family,” said Penny Junor, a royal biographer, “does have implications for the future of the monarchy.”
A royal family in transition fights to maintain its image.