bitchy | Lownie: The monarchy will be ‘restructured’ & the Sussexes’ titles will be taken away

Perhaps this is a controversial assessment of the current royal gossip industry in big 2026, but anyone still trying to tie Prince Andrew’s depravity in any way to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex is a delusional hack and/or Prince William. We saw, this week, Tom Sykes argue on his Royalist Substack that Prince William needs to be made “co-monarch” so that he can deal with Andrew… and Prince Harry. Now Andrew Lownie, author of last year’s book about the Yorks and their sleaze, tells NewsNation that he believes a royal housecleaning is in order, and that the Windsors are going to punish the Sussexes alongside former Prince Andrew this year.

A seismic restructuring of the British monarchy may be closer than anyone realizes — and Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and even their children could be among the biggest casualties. According to royal biographer Andrew Lownie, King Charles is preparing to accelerate sweeping reforms that would modernize the institution, increase financial transparency, and — most significantly — strip titles from any member of the family who is no longer an active working royal.

“I think we are going to see some reforms being announced,” Lownie told me. “More transparency about records and finances, and I think we may well see some moves to remove titles from anyone who isn’t in an active working role. So, I think they’re going to deal with the Andrew and Harry problem at the same time.”

The timing is no accident. The ongoing legal pressure surrounding Prince Andrew appears to have forced the palace’s hand, pushing Charles to act on reforms he may have hoped to delay until William’s reign.

“The public do want to see more obvious change,” Lownie said. “I think this has hastened reforms that are so necessary that perhaps Charles was hoping William would start. But I think those will now be accelerated.”

The result: Harry and Andrew — two very different problems for the crown — may end up facing the same solution. A clean, institutional severance that allows the monarchy to draw a clear line between its working members and everyone else.

For the Sussexes, the implications are profound. Lownie believes there is a strong likelihood that not only Harry and Meghan, but also their children Archie and Lilibet, could lose their royal titles entirely under the proposed reforms.

At the start of this year, sources close to Harry suggested he had received assurances that taxpayer-funded royal security would be reinstated. Lownie is skeptical that the promise will hold, especially now.

“It’s very hard to justify royal security paid for by the taxpayer when you’re no longer a working royal,” he said, “and when many of the working royals don’t have proper security, and when you have plenty of money that you could fund your own security, and where you’re traveling to countries far more dangerous than Britain without getting security paid for by the British. I think he’s on a sticky wicket.”

[From NewsNation]

My thoughts are the same – it would be extremely crass, tone-deaf and childish for the monarchy to “use” Andrew’s very real depravity and very real crimes as an excuse to throw Harry and Meghan under the royal bus one more time. It shows a deep vein of unseriousness at the heart of a rotten institution. People will see through it as well – during all of the memeing and commentary yesterday for Prince Andrew’s arrest, people were clearly pointing out the monarchy and British press’s next move: blaming Andrew on Harry and Meghan. Why didn’t Meghan do anything about Andrew? Why didn’t Harry warn anyone? Etc. But you know what? If Charles and William really feel that strongly about it, do it. Do it and watch the fallout.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.