Ex-Prince Andrew's 'War Hero' Accolades 'Went to' His Head, Claims Biographer: 'He Reveled in the Adulation for Years'

Royal biographer and iconic journalist Tina Brown revealed that former Prince Andrew’s early days as a military helicopter pilot fueled a profound sense of entitlement.

In her FRESH H-LL Substack article titled “Can the Andrew File Get Any Worse?” Brown claimed jingoistic press adulation following the Falklands War warped his judgment, noting that he was given lavish privileges, including free rein of a helicopter to play golf.

The former Vanity Fair editor attributes a significant portion of Andrew’s warped worldview to the media frenzy that followed his deployment as a Sea King helicopter co-pilot during the 1982 Falklands War.

Brown references author Andrew Lownie’s paperback update of Entitled, a book she deemed “his Prince Andrew defenestration,” as a source that suggests, when it comes to the disgraced former royal, “we only know the tip of the iceberg.”

According to a former associate speaking to Brown, Andrew's privileges in his twenties were so extreme that military helicopters were made available to him "whenever he wanted," even when he simply wanted to fly to the St. Andrews golf course.

“How many years have we known that, as UK trade envoy, Andrew was the bane of the Foreign Office, running around the world with his rampant scepter, telling toilet jokes and, according to former civil servants, spending taxpayer money on additional hotel rooms for cavorting ‘masseuses’?” Brown mused.

The former New Yorker editor suggested the excessive license he was given stemmed from both this media-fueled status and his being Queen Elizabeth II's reportedly favorite son, shielding him from the reality of his own abilities.

“A friend from Andrew’s early twenties told me it wasn’t just the Queen’s favoritism that was responsible for the prince’s farcically warped view of his own minimal abilities. As much to blame was the press adoration of him as a war hero, after his extended ten minutes of fame serving as a Sea King helicopter co-pilot in the Royal Navy in the Falklands War, a military operation that was almost as absurd in its expression of overblown patriotism as Andrew was himself,” Brown said.

“The sight of all the jingoistic newspaper accolades spread out on the breakfast table at Balmoral apparently went to Andrew’s head. He reveled in the adulation for years,” she concluded.

These claims are part of an ongoing re-examination of Andrew's life, tracing his trajectory from being lauded as a national hero in his youth to his eventual stepping down from public royal duties and the stripping of his military affiliations and patronages in the wake of the revelations of his association with dead child abuser Jeffrey Epstein evolving from a close, decades-long friendship into a devastating public scandal.

Brown says it's thanks to Lownie's book that "we now know that Sarah Ferguson — aside from her toxic association with Jeffrey Epstein — reportedly had regular s-x trysts with baby-oil extortionist P. Diddy (which she denies). What’s left for Lownie’s third edition? Freak-offs at the Beirut Hilton with Bashar al-Assad?"

The journalist said that both Andrew and his ex-wife were prime targets for Epstein and his ilk.

"The grifting, the greed, the complete absence of self-discipline made them easy marks for a practiced reprobate like Jeffrey Epstein. They have come to symbolize a rot at the heart of the whole royal system, in which the monarchy’s 'aura' allows its members absolute impunity," she wrote.

As of May, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has not been formally charged with any crime, but he remains under active criminal investigation.

Brown isn't sure he will ever face justice.

"But now it feels that 'misconduct in public office' is a hard-to-prove understatement of a charge that could somehow slip away, and, as in the U.S. with the noxious seepage from the Epstein files, it leaves unrectified the decades of Andrew’s sordid exploitation of women," she wrote.