For her 44th birthday Monday, California-based Meghan Markle seems to just want to enjoy family time at the beach, release some more of her As Ever rosé wine and ignore reports that Netflix has canceled its lucrative production deal with her and Prince Harry.
Instead, the aspiring influencer and her royal husband are being dragged into the latest tawdry, scandalous mess involving Harry’s dissolute uncle, Prince Andrew, thanks to a new new biography about the disgraced Duke of York. As excerpted in the Daily Mail, the book by author Andrew Lownie, “Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York,” offers new details about Andrew’s alleged abusive, corrupt and sexually depraved behavior, which Buckingham Palace allegedly hoped to keep under wraps.
Unfortunately, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are dealing with collateral damage from the book. For one thing, Lownie’s Daily Mail excerpt rehashes the staff bullying allegations made against Meghan during her time as a senior working member of the royal family from 2018 to 2020. The book suggests that Buckingham Palace decided in 2022 to withhold releasing the results of an internal investigation into the allegations, apparently to spare the late Queen Elizabeth II from public disclosure over Andrew’s alleged bad behavior, which included his own cruelty to staff, as well as orgies in Thailand while representing the U.K. government.
“In 2021, after Meghan Markle was accused of bullying staff, Buckingham Palace braced itself for historic complaints about Prince Andrew’s bullying, profanities and impossible demands,” Lownie wrote in the Daily Mail excerpt. “Some say a report on the bullying accusations against Meghan Markle has never been released because it would also raise questions about the behavior of the queen’s second son.”
LONDON, ENGLAND – JUNE 10: Prince Andrew, Duke of York and Prince Harry during a reception at the Guildhall following the National Service of Thanksgiving for Queen Elizabeth II’s 90th birthday at St Paul’s Cathedral on June 10, 2016 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Hannah McKay – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Harry and Meghan have reportedly called in their lawyers to dispute some of the book’s other claims, according to Newsweek. They include stories about Andrew and Harry getting into a fist fight in 2013 over something Andrew said behind Harry’s back and about Andrew warning Harry about getting involved with Meghan, saying the marriage wouldn’t last a year. “He openly accused Meghan of being an opportunist and thought she was too old for Harry,” a source told Lownie.
A statement sent to Newsweek said that Harry and Andrew “never had a physical fight” and that Andrew never made “the comments he is alleged to have made about the Duchess of Sussex to Prince Harry.”
Lownie’s book chronicles other pretty outrageous, boorish behavior by Andrew, both in the company of his pedophile friend, the late American financier Jeffrey Epstein, and on his own. Andrew’s fall from grace occurred in 2019, after he gave a disastrous TV interview about his friendship with Epstein, who died in prison after being accused of sex trafficking under-aged girls. The duke was eventually stripped of his royal and military titles.
Lownie’s book quotes sources who allege Andrew has had sex with more than 1,000 women, with investigative journalist Ian Halperin telling Lownie that “Randy Andy” slept with “porn stars, actresses, models, athletes, politicians and bartenders at clubs.”
A friend of Andrew’s also told Lownie that “sex is his big thing in life,” while a Reuters correspondent said that more than 40 women were brought to his hotel room in Bangkok in 2006 when he represented his mother at the diamond jubilee celebration for the king of Thailand.”Often, as soon as one left, another would arrive,” the correspondent said.
Andrew also was into “kinky sexual activity,” said a former model who had sex with him while he was still married to ex-wife Sarah Ferguson. The model told Lownie that Andrew “had no boundaries” and enjoyed “an open arrangement with his wife.”
As for his treatment of staff, Andrew “could be unbelievably cruel,” according to Lownie. He once mocked a former head of the household for not using the correct title when referring to his grandmother, the Queen Mother. “You (expletive) imbecile,” Andrew shouted. “Get out.”
The way Andrew treated staff caused one royal aide to describe him as “a deeply unpleasant man,” Lownie reported. Colin Burgess, who served as equerry to the Queen Mother for many years, told Lownie he was treated “with disdain” by Andrew, in “stark” contrast to the respect for staff shown by King Charles and Prince William.
The bullying allegations made against Meghan may seem tame by comparison. They were first revealed in March 2021 by veteran royal reporter Valentine Low in the Times UK, ahead of Meghan and Harry’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey. Low’s report was based on an internal email sent by a former aide, Jason Knauf, who described Meghan’s “totally unacceptable” behavior to staff before and after she married into the royal family in 2018. Knauf’s email said the American former TV actor “always seems to have someone in her sights,” “was able to bully two PAs out of the household” in the past year” and had undermined “the confidence of two staff.”
Meghan and Harry have both vehemently denied the bullying allegations, with a representative for Meghan decrying Low’s original report as part of “an orchestrated smear campaign” against her. But Low has not backed down from his reporting. In a YouTube interview just last week, he pointed out that the oft-litigious Sussexes never sued him for his Times UK story and that the bullying allegations have followed Meghan to the United States, with the Hollywood Reporter and Vanity Fair also filing two separate stories in the past year about her alleged poor treatment of staff.
Buckingham Palace launched its internal investigation into Meghan’s alleged bullying of staff following Low’s report, the BBC reported. But a senior palace source revealed in 2022 that the investigation would remain private, the BBC reported.
Originally Published: August 3, 2025 at 10:31 PM PDT