Disgraced Prince Andrew "Needs a Miracle" to "Make a Comeback," Royal Expert Warns

Prince Andrew, the once respected member of the Royal Family, became the black sheep after the arrest of his close friend Jeffrey Epstein and the shocking sexual assault allegations made against him by Virginia Giuffre. While he agreed to step back from his duties as an official working member of the family last year, over the past few months, he has started strategizing on a possible comeback.

However, according to one royal expert, getting back into the good graces of his family and the rest of the world will take a "miracle." 

According to The Daily Mail, Andrew has recently been telling his friends that his reputation is on the mend, even though his brother, King Charles, and nephew, Prince William, are "convinced he has no future as a working royal."

But per Royal Commentator Richard Fitzwilliams, Andrew's public comeback is a "Sisyphean task" and requires a "miracle, not public support from prison from Ghislaine Maxwell."

Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for her involvement in the Epstein scandal, gave a prison interview this week supporting Prince Andrew, maintaining she "doesn't believe" the allegations against him. "I don't believe it is real for a second, in fact, I'm sure it's not," she said of the photo of Prince Andrew with his arm around a 17-year-old Giuffre.

"There has never been an original. I don't believe it happened and certainly, the way it's described would have been impossible. I don't have any memory of going to Tramp [nightclub]," Maxwell said.

"Andrew may have secured an agreement for Virginia Roberts Giuffre never to speak out against him publicly when he settled her civil suit which alleged that she had had non-consensual sex with him on three occasions,'" says Fitzwilliams. "If this is so, the fact that she is writing her memoir may not concern him and his legal team unduly. If not it will obviously be of very considerable concern."

However, if she did score a multi-million dollar deal for a memoir, it will "cause problems for the Palace as whenever she is in the news it is linked in the public mind with him," Fitzwilliams adds. "Obviously any new revelations would be of enormous concern."

According to sources, Andrew is trying to go back on his settlement agreement after Giuffre dropped charges against another man she accused of sexual assault. "Andrew has undoubtedly been given hope by the settling of all legal issues between Giuffre and the top American lawyer Alan Dershowitz in which she admitted she 'may have made a mistake' in claiming that he had abused her as a teenager," Fitzwilliams alleges.

"However to actually clear his name it would also be necessary to have some credibility in the court of public opinion where his ratings are terrible."

"He is in disgrace, cannot use his HRH and carries out no royal duties. He has not been convicted of any crime so he sees no reason to do penance, but he promised to help the FBI in their investigations into Epstein's crimes and does not appear to have done so," Fitzwilliams says. 

He also points to Andrew's disastrous interview with BBC's Emily Maitlis that has become "infamous and has made a public comeback all but impossible," Fitzwilliams claims. "If he attends a royal event it can overshadow it and King Charles and William are convinced he has no future as a working royal. For a real comeback, which the public would accept, he needs a miracle and not public support from prison from Ghislaine Maxwell, his close friend who is also a convicted sex offender. It is a Sisyphean task."