Why did Andrew leave Windsor's Royal Lodge in such a hurry?

The royal drama known as the Siege of Royal Lodge is finally over.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor left Windsor not with a regal fanfare, but with the chug of removal lorries, heading for Norfolk in the night.

He was the Duke of York and a prince when he moved in more than 20 years ago and now he's leaving as a plain old mister. It's not just memories he's leaving behind, but his royal status, his titles and his life with his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson.

It might feel like a chapter closing, but every time we've said that, this story has taken another remarkable twist.

It was announced last October that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor would be leaving his 30-room mansion, along with losing his titles - with royal sources suggesting he would move to Sandringham in the early months of the year.

But in the end it all felt like a rush, a move in the night, at a time when Andrew was under the most intense scrutiny, with the waterfall of bad news from the Epstein files raining down on him and his ex-wife.

The move, first reported in the Sun, was so rushed that Andrew will still have to go back to fetch some of his things, as there wasn't time to fully prepare for the sudden end to his time there and there are still loose ends to tie up.

This hurried departure follows the terrible optics of Andrew being seen in recent days riding his horse around Windsor and waving from his car, at a time when so much attention was being focused on his dealings with a convicted sex offender.

Now a line has been drawn under such provocative appearances, he's going to be tucked away in Sandringham, first of all in a temporary home on the estate, at Wood Farm, before his planned permanent new address. This will be at the expense of the King, rather than any public money.

It's understood that it's thought wiser to have Andrew in a place where he is out of sight, but overseen, rather than pushing him into exile where he would be vulnerable to dodgier sources of funding and support.

Andrew has always strongly denied any wrongdoing.

Buckingham Palace has emphasised that the focus should be on the victims of Epstein - and that this is not just a platitude, with Queen Camilla having been a very public campaigner against violence against women and girls.

But it's no secret how frustrated the Palace has been over how Andrew's scandals have overshadowed other royal events. It's been graphically described by one insider as a "running sore".

This week the King met unsung heroes providing local government services, and later this week his film about his philosophy of harmony will be released. Next week the Prince of Wales will be visiting Saudi Arabia on behalf of the government.

Such events would disappear under the billowing smoke from the Andrew story - and there was clearly a readiness to put an end to it as much as possible and not to feed it with any more of Andrew's impromptu appearances on horseback.

There's also a symbolic importance for removing him from Royal Lodge. Even the name suggested grandeur and royal approval, and his living in style there with Sarah Ferguson seemed to represent a sense of entitlement that rankled with the public.

It felt emblematic of privilege without accountability.

Andrew sank more than £8m into the house when he took up the 75-year lease with his own private cast-iron arrangement, but for at least the past 18 months he has been under pressure from the Palace to move out.

In autumn 2024, the King added to that pressure by cutting off Andrew's financial support, leaving Andrew with significant costs for security and maintenance. Those pressures will have been removed by his quitting Royal Lodge, but so has any independence.

And because of the dilapidated state of the property, it's already been indicated that he won't get any money back from his original investment.

Now that the move has finally happened it will also mark the end, at least so far, of what has seemed a remarkably durable double act, with Sarah Ferguson not making the move to Norfolk.

The pair had remained doggedly together, as she had said: "We're divorced to each other, not from each other."

While in news terms, Royal Lodge had become associated with Andrew's scandals, from Epstein to the alleged Chinese spy, it was also where the former Duke and Duchess of York had raised their family.

It was where Sarah had re-invented her battered career multiple times, with Andrew's biographer Andrew Lownie calling her the "Houdini" of the Royal Family.

Although perhaps, with the emails about her appetite for luxury and first-class travel, she didn't expect that their escape vehicle would turn out to be a removals van.

In terms of what's next, the Epstein files revealed emails about Andrew that weren't as dramatic as those about sex and money, but could in the long-term be very significant.

They showed that, behind the scenes, there had been serious attempts by the US legal authorities to get Andrew to testify about what he knew about Epstein.

That included a formal approach to the Home Office to begin the process of requiring Andrew to give evidence, after attempts to get him to testify voluntarily had failed.

The prospect of Andrew being forced to give evidence would set the Palace nerves jangling. Not to mention his lawyers.

More immediately, the ex-duke will be consigned to Sandringham, with the Palace having a sense of a duty of care for Andrew, but also hoping that he will take care to stay away from the cameras, as well as the headlines.

They'll be hoping that, like the removal vans, the story will be moving on.

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