There is something magnificently British about the possibility that one day, in a courtroom smelling faintly of damp carpet and quiet authority, a clerk might rise and announce, “Rex versus Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.”
Not Prince Andrew. Not His Royal Highness. Just Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Defendant.
And Rex, of course, meaning the King. His brother.
It would not be Charles the man prosecuting him. Charles would be elsewhere, unveiling a plaque or examining an anachronistic shrub. The prosecution would be brought in his name but entirely without his involvement. This is the genius of the British constitution. The monarch is everywhere in theory and nowhere in practice. The law proceeds with perfect indifference to family Christmas seating plans.
In the eyes of the court, Andrew would simply be another name on the docket. No titles. No ceremony. Just procedure. The same quiet machinery that deals with unpaid taxes and unfortunate scaffolding disputes would turn its attention, briefly and without emotion, to a man who once saluted from the quarterdeck.
It would be a moment of remarkable levelling. Because when titles fall away, what remains is simply the name and the evidence.
Or, in Andrew’s case, the absence of perspiration.
His most famous defence was not legal but biological. He explained, with straight-faced conviction, that he could not have been sweating at the relevant time because he did not sweat at all. A condition, he said, brought on decades earlier during the Falklands War. It was a bold strategy. Not alibi by witness, but alibi by epidermis.
He missed a commercial opportunity there. In a country that spends millions trying to suppress the faintest hint of underarm anxiety, he alone possessed the ultimate solution. Mountbatten-Windsor Dry. Guaranteed protection, even under intense public scrutiny.
Instead, the claim entered folklore. A reminder that confidence and plausibility are not always close acquaintances.
History offers less subtle precedents. His distant predecessor, the Duke of Clarence, allegedly resolved his own constitutional difficulties by falling into a butt of Malmsey wine. One hopes modern Britain would opt for something less medieval. Perhaps a vat of sherry. Something measured. Something bureaucratic. A quiet administrative misstep near a label marked “Property of the Crown.”
But no such drama is necessary. The real genius of the system is that nothing so theatrical need occur. The Crown does not rage. It does not seek vengeance. It simply processes.
And if ever the words are spoken - Rex versus Mountbatten-Windsor - they will carry no emotion at all.
Just the quiet, inescapable suggestion that even a man who never sweats cannot remain dry forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment