What Happens When a Spoilt and Not Very Bright Man Has the Wrong Position in Society? The Answer? Prince Andrew

The new book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York is so much more than a biography of Prince Andrew (the Queen’s second, and favourite, son) and his ex-wife (and current girlfriend) Sarah Ferguson. Especially considering all of the publicity surrounding it, and its serialisation in The Mail Online, I am surprised its psychological revelations haven’t received more attention. The fact that Prince Andrew and “Fergie” have had every aspect of the lives scrutinised to the extent that they have is almost akin to child cruelty.

This may seem like hyperbole, so let me explain why. These two people are extremely famous, one since birth and the other upon marrying a senior royal. As I’ve discussed in my new book, Genius Under House Arrest: The Cancelation of James Watson, in general, high status is predicted by a combination of intelligence and a pro-social personality, and this is what marks out the middle class. Extremely high status appears to be associated with very high intelligence (although this is much less the cases, as here, when status is inherited rather than earned) combined with optimally anti-social traits which render you an original thinker or optimally Narcissistic and Machiavellian. Intelligence is about 80% genetic, personality is around 50% genetic and people tend to marry those who are genetically similar. The result is that, across time, social classes are like castes; socioeconomic status is about 80% heritable across time. Intelligence, for example, is associated with the social class into which you are born, not merely the one you achieve.

Now, just as a scientific genius, such as James Watson, can be born to normal range intelligent people due to unlikely genetic combinations, an unintelligent person can be born to intelligent parents. However, we also have an environmental leeway of 20% which includes factors such as luck and nepotism. It takes far less intelligence to protect the fortune with which you’re born that to build up that fortune. Your successful ancestor, like the genius, may reflect unlikely genetic and environmental combinations, meaning there is bound to be “regression to the mean” in his offspring and the offspring will sexually select for mediocre people like themselves. It is via this means that two people of relatively low intelligence and of relatively anti-social personality – in other words, people who are rather like children – find themselves in the upper class and associating with the kinds of people who have made their way into that class due to very high intelligence and optimally anti-social personality.

The obvious case in point, as set out in Entitled, is their relationship with the convicted under-age girl trafficker, paedophile and financier Jeffrey Epstein. The book proves beyond doubt that the photo of Prince Andrew with the 17-year-old Virginia Roberts (Guiffre), who Epstein employed as a “masseuse,” is genuine and that Prince Andrew’s supporters were lying when they said it was a forgery, and that Andrew was lying when he claimed he had no memory of it and that he doesn’t put his arm round members of the public. The photo had a serial number on it, Roberts had the other photos in the sequence, and the serial number allowed the photo to be dated to year 2000, when one of the meetings between Andrew and this trafficked girl (with whom Andrew had sex three times, according to her) occurred. Andrew rebuffed Virginia’s allegation that they danced together in a London club and that he was sweating by telling a notorious BBC interviewer that he cannot sweat due to a medical condition. But as the book points out:

Experts said there was no known medical condition that made humans unable to sweat and pictures were produced from 2001 showing Andrew perspiring. After he  said the picture with Giuffre must have been doctored because he always wore a suit and tie in London, pictures were produced of him photographed at events in casual clothes.

What emerges is a man who was very impressed by Epstein’s wealth and connections and who, by all accounts, is a sex addict who had allowed his ego to be massaged by Epstein. Andrew is not intelligent enough to foresee the possible damage his behaviour might do and he is so Narcissistic – so “entitled” – that this overwhelms any intelligence he does have. Like a child in the early stages of development, Andrew tells lies, lacking the wits to realise that other people are likely to investigate him in depth and, so, prove them to be lies.

From a very young age, the book reports, Prince Andrew, in contrast to his siblings, was a spoilt brat who would behave appallingly and was indulged in so-doing. At school, he was a bully and a braggart, and, unlike his siblings, his royal status was especially important to him; to his self-esteem. The book reports numerous examples of his insisting on being addressed properly, failing to turn up to roll call at school (and this being tolerated because of who he was), breaking military protocol (with this, only on occasion, not being tolerated), his rudeness to his staff and his assorted tantrums and outrageous, childish acts, such as spraying journalists with paint in Los Angeles or ramming his car into palace gates when they were too slow to open.

Despite the best education money could buy, Andrew performed so poorly at school that there was no question of his going to university, as did his two brothers, albeit with lower grades than would usually be acceptable. This is a Narcissistic man of, possibly, slightly below average intelligence having to live the kind of exposed life that a high-status person lives when usually armed, at the very least, with high intelligence. That it would be a disaster, especially in the media age, is no surprise at all. Andrew’s hereditary wealth allowed him to be spoilt and of high status with low intelligence. Genetics or childhood environmental insults may have done the rest in terms of distinguishing him from his brothers.

Sarah Ferguson comes across as tragically similar, though, perhaps, less unpleasant than Andrew. Her father was so dull that he failed his leaving exams at Eton and she inherited this lack of intelligence, leaving her prestigious school with very few qualifications and becoming a secretary. Though socially skilled, fun and ebullient, we find her to be fantastically wasteful of other people’s money, lazy when it comes to royal duties, utterly indiscrete, and sexually incontinent. Infamously, photographs were published in the UK press of her having her toes sucked by her paramour.

Children, compared to adults, are entitled (selfish) and of low intelligence (as opposed to IQ which compares children of the same age; intelligence increases with age). This is one of the many reasons why we tend to protect children from themselves, why we guide them. Prince Andrew and Fergie, compared to normal adults of their age, are like children and yet they are world-famous and subject to intense scrutiny by virtue of being senior royals who are paid for out of the public purse. With Prince Harry, whom the book reveals had a physical fight with Andrew over Andrew’s cutting remarks about Meghan, we see the same phenomenon: a low-IQ person made to live his life in the public gaze.

As a Brit, this book made me realise that there can be something especially cruel about our system of royalty. Some of these people would be best fitted to an average job, sitting in an office or, maybe, working in a supermarket. But they live their lives in public meaning that their stupidity, and their other flaws, are on display, leaving them humiliated and wounded in a way that would never be so if their position in society was consistent with their abilities.