After months of speculation about what Prince Henry might tell in his memoir, the official release of In the Shadows this Tuesday January 10th has unearthed new details that were still unknown and which the Duke of Sussex has yet to share has had half a dozen interviews given to date to promote his book. Sales of the biography were inadvertently brought forward in several bookshops in Madrid last week and various media, in addition to the general public, were able to purchase copies before the rest of the world. A day later, the news surfaced in national and international magazines and newspapers. No member of his family is saved. Enrique talks about his brother Guillermo and Kate Middleton, his grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth, his father Carlos and the current queen consort Camila… And also his uncle Andrés.
In the documentary about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex that aired a month ago on Netflix, Meghan Markle claimed not to know who Enrique was, whom she had to search on Google. At that time there was criticism of his character because of the lack of knowledge of the British royal family. Now, in the book, the prince has revealed it once again: He says the actress mistook Prince Andrew for Queen Elizabeth II’s personal assistant. “After a moment, Meg asked me something about the Queen’s handmaid. I asked him who he was talking about,” he recalls in the book of his first meeting with the royal family at the Royal Lodge in October 2016. “This man holding the bag. The man who walked you to the door. Wasn’t that your assistant? Who was it?” Markle replied, to which Enrique added, “That was her second child. Andreas”. In the book, Enrique jokes about his wife’s confusion: “She definitely hadn’t Googled us.”
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In recent years, Prince Andrew has kept a low profile and disappeared from the media spotlight after his controversial friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein became public, costing him his resignation from public office in November 2019. After years of absolute absolute silence on the matter within the British royal family, Enrique is the first member of the Windsors to publicly criticize Andrés, calling the matter a “shameful scandal” in his book. A revelation that comes after it was learned the Dukes of Sussex would be left without private security while the Duke of York maintained protections despite any controversy sparked by the sex abuse allegations. “He was embroiled in an embarrassing scandal, being accused of sexual assault by a young woman and no one had suggested he was losing his security. Despite the complaints people had against us, sex offenses were not on the list.”
Virginia Giuffre was 17 when she was forced into intimate encounters with the Duke of York, a story emerged after a photo of the young woman with him was published. Giuffre had been mistreated by Epstein for years at the time. Prince Andrés has at all times denied this information, even questioning the veracity of the image. But none of this helped as he was stripped of his military titles and royal public duties and faced a civil lawsuit. Finally, in February 2022, Andrés and Giuffre reached an out-of-court settlement to settle the child sex abuse lawsuit. The amount the Duke of York had to pay was kept secret, ending a decade in which the woman accused the prince of raping her when she was a minor.