Queen Elizabeth II is facing a severe case of writer’s block as she prepares her annual Christmas speech amid a turbulent year for the royals and fallout from Prince Andrew‘s Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
The 93-year-old monarch is progressing slowly on the speech — a tradition that dates back to her grandfather King George V, and one she takes very seriously as her opportunity to address the nation, Vanity Fair reported this week.
“It’s still at a first-draft stage because of the election, but it probably hasn’t been the easiest speech to write,” a royal source told the magazine. “It has been a very different time behind the scenes, and morale is at a bit of a low.”
The Duke of York has seen his reputation torpedoed by Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s resurfaced allegations that Epstein, a convicted sex offender who committed suicide in August, coerced her into having sex with the royal and other powerful men when she was a teen.
Last month, Andrew announced that he was stepping back from public duties “for the foreseeable future” amid furor over his now-infamous BBC interview defending himself against the allegations.
Insiders said at the time that Queen Elizabeth made the decision to fire her own son.
“The scandal around Prince Andrew has been deeply disturbing, and he will doubtless face more problems in the new year, including pressure for his testimony under oath,” the queen’s biographer Sally Bedell Smith told Vanity Fair. “But the queen — along with Prince Charles, Prince Philip, and Prince William — acted decisively when the potential damage to the monarchy became clear.”
Royal expert and writer Leslie Carroll, author of “Royal Pains: A Rogues’ Gallery of Brats, Brutes, and Bad Seeds,” told Fox News that the Queen is undoubtedly struggling as the scandal continues to unravel.
“I feel a bit sad that at this stage in her life … the queen can never relax her hands on the reins of the monarchy and completely trust the younger generation to carry on,” Carroll said. “[She] is said to be ‘disappointed’ by Andrew … He’s always been a wild one, but he went off the rails by associating with Epstein, to begin with.”
“The queen will continue to ‘neither complain nor explain’ because she was raised to do so; and with ‘duty first’ as a core belief,” Carroll continued. “[She] … needs to keep the country together as its moral spine, demonstrating the ‘there will always be an England’ sentiment that has kept Britain’s monarchy the longest-running show in history — still going after over a millennium.”
Prince Andrew hasn’t been the only concern for the Queen this year — she’s been dragged into the ongoing Brexit saga, and Buckingham Palace is grappling with rumors of fallings out between Prince William and Kate Middleton and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, according to Vanity Fair.
But Her Royal Highness is getting by with a little help from her eldest son, Prince Charles, Bedell Smith told the outlet.
“The queen’s relationship with Charles is closer than ever, and he has settled into his role,” the biographer said. “He’s not the outspoken man he once was, and she admires him and what he is doing. He is representing her well. I think it must be a comfort that she knows he will be a good king. The line of succession is secure, and you can see the Cambridges getting into their roles as a future king and queen. I don’t see any ominous clouds on the horizon for 2020.”