This is what has really happened to the titles and honours of Prince Andrew

Prince Andrew has given up his titles and honours in a surprise move that is reported to have left Buckingham Palace rather content.

Just hours after concrete reports began to circulate that his dukedom was about to disappear, Andrew put out a statement in which he said he was voluntarily relinquishing his titles and the other honours he had received.

He’s no longer known as Duke of York, a title he had held since 1986. The other titles given to him at the same time – Earl of Inverness and Baron Killyleagh – are also a thing of the past.

It comes after fresh revelations about his friendship with the convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. Earlier this week, correspondence between the two in which Andrew told the disgraced financier that they were ”in this together” surfaced. Just weeks ago, Andrew’s former wife was revealed to have sent Epstein an email apologising for critical comments in an interview and asking for forgiveness.

Now, both have lost their titles. Andrew will no longer use his and Fergie has reverted to her maiden name of Sarah Ferguson.

But what has actually happened to the titles that The King’s brother is said to have cherished so dearly?

Andrew has said ” I will therefore no longer use my title or the honours which have been conferred upon me. As I have said previously, I vigorously deny the accusations against me.”

However, the titles still exist. This statement shows that Andrew will no longer make use of them but the titles still belong to him.

For a dukedom to be permanently removed, an Act of Parliament is required. None has happened and there are no requests for one to happen.

King George V did strip several of his relations of peerages in World War One. However, that again needed parliamentary involvement. The Titles Deprivation Act of 1917 allowed the setting up of a committee of the Privy Council which would examine the actions of peers who had ”borne arms against His Majesty or His Allies” during that conflict. The names of those who were found to have done so were then sent to parliament which had forty days for either the House of Commons or the House of Lords to disagree. When that didn’t happen, the peers named lost their titles.

That was a for a very specific reason and didn’t set a precedent.

However, a century later, Prince Andrew has agreed to give up the titles presented to him. However, as things stand, it remains a voluntary decision. The title will become extinct on his death and at that point could be recreated.

The actions of 1917 do mean that Andrew keeps one other thing. In that year, George V issued Letters Patent that all children of a Monarch would be prince or princess. And so The King’s brother retains that and the statement on his other titles came from ‘Prince Andrew’.

Should pressure grow on him to no longer use that, he could be known simply as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

The titles of his two daughters aren’t affected. Under the 1917 Letters Patent, the children of the sons of a Monarch were allowed to use HRH and prince or princess. It’s reported that Andrew and Sarah were always keen for that to be the case with their children who have used those titles since birth. They remain Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.

And Andrew and his children and grandchildren retain their places in the line of succession. He is eighth.

However, he has given up his membership of the oldest Order of Chivalry in the country, the Order of the Garter. And he has been sidelined as a Counsellor of State after King Charles asked Parliament to add Princess Anne and Prince Edward to the list of people who can take on some of the Monarch’s duties in the case of temporary ill health or absence.

Andrew stopped using his HRH in 2022 and lost his patronages and military associations then, too. Now, three years on, he has relinquished the titles he has used for almost forty years. He will never be called the Duke of York again even if the title still, technically, belongs to him.