Prince Andrew remains on the confidential government list for a full royal ceremonial funeral, according to a report in the Daily Mail. The confidential “bridge” plans could still cover the disgraced former duke, even after he stepped back from royal duties in 2019 and the Crown formally stripped him of his style, titles and honours in 2025. Senior Whitehall sources told the Mail on Sunday that he remains on a secret list of royals who will receive high-profile funerals, despite no longer being a working royal and having lost his royal styles and honours.
According to the report, officials currently plan a service at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, followed by burial at the Royal Burial Ground at Frogmore. The reported plans nevertheless retain a formal royal funeral service and burial within the Windsor estate.
Retired Rear Admiral Chris Parry told the Daily Mail he believed the Royal Navy could ask volunteers to serve as pallbearers, although no officials have confirmed such involvement.
Mountbatten–Windsor served in the Royal Navy, including during the Falklands War as a Sea King helicopter co–pilot, and was the honorary colonel of the Grenadier Guards, the Royal Irish Regiment, and the Royal Regiment of Scotland. However, he lost his military titles amid the Epstein scandal.
Retired Rear Admiral Chris Parry, who captained the Royal Navy’s HMS Fearless, said he believed the Navy would ask for volunteers to act as pallbearers.
Daily Mail
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Royal “Dignity” Does Not Require Publicly Funded Pageantry
What bothers me is that people assume Andrew still deserves the full machinery of royal ceremony simply because of the family he was born into. A private funeral is one thing. A high-profile royal send-off, potentially involving public money, security and state resources, is another.
Andrew has spent years at the centre of one of the monarchy’s most damaging scandals over his association with Jeffrey Epstein, allegations against him and, more recently, an ongoing police investigation into alleged misconduct in public office. He has denied wrongdoing and was never criminally convicted, but that does not mean the public is obliged to treat him as though nothing happened. The civil case brought by Virginia Giuffre ended in a settlement, and scrutiny around his relationship with Epstein has never disappeared.
That is why I find attempts to recast him as the victim of excessive “hounding” so irritating. The question should not be whether Andrew deserves sympathy because the press still discusses his downfall. The question should be why royal privilege appears capable of surviving almost anything.
Final Thoughts
If he wants a funeral at St George’s Chapel or another royal venue, the family should pay for it privately. If public money, policing or military resources are ultimately used for a high-profile ceremonial funeral, the public is entitled to ask why those costs should fall on taxpayers rather than Andrew’s family.
And there is a wider issue here. The institution has been extraordinarily rigid when dealing with some family members, yet remarkably flexible when protecting others from the full consequences of scandal. That contradiction is hard to ignore.
A Christian funeral does not require a spectacle. Dignity does not require pageantry. Forgiveness does not require public subsidy. Andrew can be buried respectfully without turning his death into another exercise in royal rehabilitation.
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I realize this article is some six weeks old, but there are a couple of important points missed here. Andrew was not formally stripped of his titles. The king can take away certain honors, but only Parliament can decide that he is no longer a prince or a duke. That they have not done so is a blight on that institution, but it is also unsurprising. The entire monarchy is predicated on the premise that the royals are chosen and anointed by God, that their blood is special, and they are born into an exalted position. Andrew reluctantly agreed to not use his HRH publicly, but apparently still uses it privately, still lives in grace and favor housing with all of his servants, still has security – two things he maintained long after the King had removed them from his own son for the crime of doing interviews and writing a book, two things Charles himself did. Andrew still has security paid for by the king, and royal protection at home on the royal estate owned by his brother. This was all theater, not any kind of real consequence. The man who raped children and sold state secrets to enrich himself and his friends remains a royal with virtually all the benefits that entails.