Prince Andrew Born: Duke of York Enters Royal Family

Prince Andrew, Duke of York, served as a Royal Navy helicopter pilot during the Falklands War in 1982, flying Sea King helicopters on anti-submarine warfare missions and search-and-rescue operations. He was the first member of the British royal family to serve in a combat zone since his father, Prince Philip, in World War II. Born Andrew Albert Christian Edward on February 19, 1960, at Buckingham Palace, he was the third child of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. He was educated at Gordonstoun and the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, and spent 22 years in the Royal Navy, rising to the rank of commander. His public role shifted after his naval career to that of a trade envoy for the United Kingdom, traveling extensively to promote British business interests abroad. He married Sarah Ferguson in 1986 in a ceremony watched by an estimated 500 million television viewers. They divorced in 1996 but maintained a close personal relationship, continuing to live near each other on the Windsor estate. His association with Jeffrey Epstein, the American financier convicted of sex trafficking, became public in 2019 and devastated his reputation. A photograph of Andrew with his arm around Virginia Giuffre, who alleged that Epstein had trafficked her to Andrew when she was seventeen, circulated worldwide. Andrew gave a BBC Newsnight interview in November 2019 in which he denied the allegations but also said he had "no recollection" of meeting Giuffre. The interview was widely regarded as a catastrophic misjudgment. Giuffre filed a civil lawsuit against Andrew in the United States in 2021. He settled the case in 2022 for an undisclosed sum reported to be in the region of twelve million pounds, while admitting no wrongdoing. In January 2022, Buckingham Palace announced he had been stripped of his military titles and royal patronages and would no longer use the style "His Royal Highness" in any official capacity. He remains a member of the royal family but holds no public role.