THIS is not how Lord Louis Mountbatten planned to have his name remembered.

Mountbatten cured his insolvency by marrying Edwina Ashley, the granddaughter of a Jewish billionaire. He wormed his way into the Indian subcontinent’s history by becoming the last viceroy of India, and then its first governor-general. His final coup — the marriage of his nephew Philip to Princess Elizabeth — spawned his demand that the children of that union should bear his Mountbatten name, hence the hyphenated Mountbatten-Windsor.

Today, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has gone against his great-grandmother Queen Mary’s warning: “I have seen three great monarchies brought down because they couldn’t separate personal indulgences from duty.”

Royalty has always been vulnerable to social upstarts who encouraged their ‘personal indulgences’. Never more so than when monarchs become hostage to faith healers. Tsarina Alexandra succumbed to Grigori Rasputin’s ‘magical’ powers beca­use his prayers alleviated the pain of her haemophiliac son. The Dutch Queen Julia­­na depended on Greet Hofmans to cure her youngest daughter of near-blindness. And now, Jeffrey Epstein has caused irreversible damage to the British monarchy.

Every day, a new name is added to the roll of dishonour.

Every day, a new name is added to the roll of dishonour.

The late Queen Elizabeth II did a disservice to her heir by bequeathing Andrew to him. As a mother, she tolerated Andrew’s libidinous affairs. As a rich sovereign, she gave £7 million as a loan towards the near £12m out-of-court settlement made by Andrew in March 2022 to silence Virginia Giuffre. The late Prince Philip’s estate chipped in with £3.5m and £1.5m came from Charles’s own funds.

The Western press cannot have enough of Andrew’s continuing descent from grace, nor of revelations crawling out of the Epstein files. In January 2026, the US Department of Justice released 3m redacted pages, including 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. It admits that there could be up to “a total of 6m pages”.

The scale is mind-boggling. It would take a human over 44 years to sift through them. Where did Epstein hoard so much confidential data on his ‘clients’? And how did he insinuate himself so smoothly into the highest echelons of society across the globe? He is reported to have boasted: “I control everyone and everything. I collect people. I own people. I can damage people” — even from the grave. Every day, a new name is added to the roll of dishonour — among them, Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, Lord Peter Mandelson, UAE billionaire Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, Bill Gates, and Miroslav Lajčák (a former UNGA president).

Their indiscretions were not limited lapses, like the Profumo-Keeler affair in 1961 or former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s assault of a hotel maid in 2011. Epstein procured mostly underage victims to oblige his friends and contacts. Classicists see a parallel between Epstein and Milton’s Samson Agonistes. Both died by suicide: Epstein, it is alleged, hanged himself in a prison cell; Samson brought the temple down on himself and his captors. As Milton put it, Samson “drew/ The whole roof after them with burst of thunder/ Upon the heads of all who sat beneath/ Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, or priests/ Their choice nobility and flower”.

Pakistan’s elite may have been too ‘insignificant’ for Epstein. India is represented by Narendra Modi, diplomat-turned-politician Hardeep Singh Puri and millionaire businessman Anil Ambani. President Trump’s name appears 38,000 times in the files. He hovers above the reach of accountability. His priorities are the reapplication of trade tariffs (this time worldwide) and the promotion of his Board of Peace, of which Pakistan has become a non-paying founding member.

Whoever sups with Trump needs a long spoon. Pakistan is beginning to pay for that privilege. Trump has had his eye on PIA’s Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan ever since it came on the market in 2003. In need of an expensive refurbishment, it remains unsold. Before PIA’s recent privatisation, it was removed from its listed assets.

Suddenly, on Feb 19, against a backdrop of the BoP logo, Trump’s special envoy Steven Witkoff signed a memorandum regarding the Roosevelt Hotel with the Pakistan government, represented by its finance minister. The memorandum outlines a plan by the two governments “to cooperate on the operation, maintenance, renovation, and redevelopment of the hotel”. (The hotel is still technically owned by PIA Holding Company Ltd.) A specious press release informed the Pakistani public that “the objective remains to secure maximum value for this property in alignment with the government’s privatisation strategy while strengthening Pakistan-United States economic ties”. Personal indulgences cannot masquerade as national interest.

The writer is an author.

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2026

© Dawn