Maybe royalty just isn’t all that important in the first place?

Former Prince Andrew’s Arrest Upends Royal Effort to Move Past His Scandal

King Charles III’s family, long rocked by infighting and grievous losses, is facing what could be the gravest threat to its moral authority in more than a generation.

But what moral authority?

What moral authority does the “royal family” have in the first place?

They’re just a set of people descended from a set of people descended from a set of people etc for many generations. That’s all. The big difference is that their status is inherited as opposed to worked for or chosen by a majority of the people. That’s it! That’s the purported moral authority! It’s not much, is it.

It may bring with it a sense of duty. That was apparently very much the case with Andrew’s mother, and very much not the case with the notorious Juke of Windsor. In any case a sense of duty by itself is not really a reason to have an inherited monarchy, especially such a rich and expensive one. Just saying.

For decades, Sandringham Estate has been a place for the House of Windsor to escape from it all. Three hours northeast of London, the palatial country house, its 20,000 sprawling acres and residences are where King Charles III and his family celebrate Christmas, waving to admirers as they parade to church services in their holiday best.

Well thank god they have a place to “escape from it all” eh wot?

Early Thursday morning, the idyllic estate was swarmed by unmarked police cars as officers arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the king’s brother, amid allegations that he shared confidential government information with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender. Later in the night, he would return to Sandringham, slinking low in the back seat of a black sport utility vehicle, with news cameras craning to capture his release.

The scenes of Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor, already stripped of his title and kicked out of his longtime home, could be seen as an unmistakable message about the end of an era. Not since King Charles I was arrested and tried for treason nearly four centuries ago, in January 1649, has a British royal been detained.

So, that’s kind of fun.

Mind you, that Windsor fella came pretty close. He was carefully watched all through WWII, because he was pro-Nazi and did some very sketchy things.

The arrest follows years in which the king, and before him his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, stayed silent on separate accusations that Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor forced Virginia Giuffre to have sex with him after she was trafficked by Mr. Epstein when she was 17 years old. The former prince has denied those allegations and wrongdoing related to Mr. Epstein.

“The royal family, far from dutifully serving the public in connection with this scandal that has enveloped Andrew, have not been transparent. They have not been forthcoming, secrets have persisted,” said Ed Owens, a historian and expert on Britain’s royal family. “It’s this lack of transparency that is the driving force of the moral problem at the heart of the mess for the monarchy.”

Because that’s the nature of monarchy, isn’t it. It’s arbitrary; it does what it wants. It’s a set of people who are made Special solely because of which parents they were born to. It’s a form of magic, and magic can’t afford to be transparent.