New Exclusive Data on Andrew's Epstein Scandal

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0:44I'm Jack Royston, Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent, and this is Newsweek's Royal Report. Hello listeners and welcome to the show. Now, regular listeners to the Royal Report will know that I really love data, and the reason I love data is because it's completely objective and there is so much in royal reporting that's basically done on vibes, but also in a way that's very heavily influenced by whether somebody prefers this royal or prefers that royal. So I like to kind of, you know, all of that is actually completely legitimate. It's absolutely fine to instinctively love one royal family member more than another.

1:18That's totally valid in my opinion. That is half the point of following the royals. But it's also really interesting as a fail-safe to kind of have some data to offset our instinctive attitudes to how the world is, because it helps to kind of keep us honest. So I asked a social listening platform called Hootsuite to kind of do a big trawl of social media, online media, YouTube, news articles, blogs, podcasts, everything, and collect some data on exactly how the conversation changed over the past six months, in which Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor went from being a prince to being basically under investigation by Thames Valley Police.

2:03And actually the results were really interesting. Obviously, you know, Andrew, the conversation was consistently very negative. It always is. Nobody in Britain likes him anymore. But it was very interesting to see how the conversations changed in relation to other members of the royal family. And it's actually probably not what you think. And I say that because one of the people who is always, constantly put forward in the media as being the main royal who wanted to grab Andrew by the scruff of the neck and take the whole thing really seriously and get the situation under control is William, and described that way not only by newspapers and news organisations, but actually even in the world of politics.

2:40At one point, people in Westminster were saying, it's down to William. William is the guy who's going to deal with this issue, implicitly suggesting that the king was failing to deal with it. But actually, what we've learned through Hootsuite is that the conversation around William turned very negative during this period in a way that it really didn't for Charles to anywhere near the same extent. And I think in Kensington Palace, the view would be that that's really unfair. And that actually William is the one who wanted something done about this. And that Charles is the one who welcomed Sarah Ferguson back into the Royal Christmas a couple of years ago and had her walking with the family to Sandringham, to church at Sandringham.

3:19But, you know, the world is what it is. And we can complain that the world is unfair, but that doesn't change it. You know, accepting that maybe something isn't deserved does not make it any less true. So let's talk about the actual numbers. So Prince William, so over this six-month period, basically from October through to March, there were 1.8 million mentioned, total mentions of Prince William. So that covers everything from individual social media posts and comments and so on through to news articles, whole YouTube videos, everything. And that was a huge increase on the previous six months of about 77%.

4:02Engagement, so the total number of interactions with all of those posts was measured at 53.5 million. That was also a big leap of about 50 % on the previous period. And the sentiment was more negative than positive. 35.4 % of those were negative. 21 % were positive. And William is obviously, he is actually the most popular role in Britain. He kind of jockeys for position with Kate. They're both very popular. But it is unusual for him to have his numbers be so low and to be dipping into the red. He's usually quite comfortably in the green. And in fact, he was at the very start of the timeline. So, which actually, you know, we started the analysis at the very end of September.

4:45and so he was comfortably green there, had his head above the water, was discussed more positively than negatively. Then as we start to get into October and we're building towards some of the big dramatic revelations of that month, he dips down to net zero basically, discussed as negatively as positively, the two figures balancing each other out. But then round about the middle of the month, we get this statement from Andrew himself in his own words. in which he says he will voluntarily give up the use of his royal titles, but says that it's basically the honourable thing to do, and that he's putting the monarchy first, as he has always done, and it's all very much couched in terms that he's become a distraction.

5:29So in other words, it's pitched to the public by Andrew himself, as not so much being punitive, but being evidence of how honourable he is and how willing he is to put duty first. And at that point, William's numbers crash. quite deep into negative territory, talks about the balance between negative and positive goes to minus 50, which is as low as it goes across the whole timeline. And it only starts to come back around at the very end of October, which is when the king released a statement basically saying that he was stripping Andrew of his royal titles. And that basically it was, Andrew's going to have to leave his house.

6:13And that was the moment when the monarchy actually, for the very first time, accepted and acknowledged publicly that Andrew had done something wrong. And at that point, Williams, the discussion about him, the conversation about him started to turn positive. And in the days that followed, went back into the green. So in other words, went back into being more positive than negative and net sentiment in the plus numbers. Low level plus numbers building to probably about 25-30%. But clearly, definitively more positive than negative nonetheless. And then the year passes and we come into January 2026.

6:54And then all of a sudden it starts to creep down again, down below the waterline. And the line turns red and he is again being talked about more negatively than positively. and as it gets towards the end of January, obviously the Epstein files then come out, 3 million documents released publicly by the US Department of Justice and the number plunges and it gets back down to a balance of minus 50%. And then he is talked about negatively consistently over that time with the timeline then finishing in about mid-March. Now his situation improved a little bit up into the minus 20s, but he didn't actually get back to positive territory, which I think will really frustrate the Palace because as far as they're concerned, William was the one who was banging the drum for taking the Andrew situation really seriously and for taking strong, definitive, punitive action against him.

7:51So they will feel it's quite unfair that he bore the brunt of the actual decline in sentiment. So, obviously, Andrew was always hated. So, even though he was being talked about universally negatively, that wasn't actually a change for him because he was already hated by the British public. So, you know, what's the big question, obviously, the first question to arise is, well, how does that differ to King Charles? Obviously, King Charles is the head of the institution. King Charles is the one who invited Sarah Ferguson to Sandringham. King Charles is the key decision maker. You know, William can recommend certain courses of action, but Charles is the one who actually takes the definitive decisions and the buck stops with him.

8:34Well, frustratingly for William, it's actually a very different story. Charles is talked about positively for almost the whole timeline, except for two periods. So he does in the period when Andrew made that statement in his own words, Charles dips very briefly into negative numbers, but it's only less than minus 10 % net sentiment. I should start with the total overarching figures. So 1.4 million mentions, which was actually down a bit from the previous six months. You may remember, obviously, there was a state visit by Donald Trump immediately before. So that will have been a period of very intense discussion of the king.

9:15Engagement was 31.4 million interactions. So again, that was down on the previous six months no doubt fueled by the frenzy around the state visits the balance of sentiment overall was more positive than negative 21.6 percent of posts were positive 19.4 were negative um so already you know those numbers are better than williams but then like i said there were two big dips for charles one was very short-lived around the time of andrew's statement saying that he was voluntarily giving up his titles. But actually, that little dip of less than minus 10 % was very quickly recovered from before, in fact, Charles actually released his own statement stripping Andrew of his titles.

10:00So he was already back in the green before that statement was issued and then remained in the green right up until the release of the Epstein files at the end of January. And then he does dip into the red for a more prolonged period of time, taking him just about into March. But then in March, he returns to the green again. And at the point where our data stops, he was back being spoken about more positively than negatively. So in other words, the impact on William appears to have been much greater. And I think it's particularly frustrating for him because, you know, you could hypothetically say, well, how do we know it's the Epstein files?

10:35How do We know it's Andrew. Maybe people just don't like William. Maybe people are turning against him for other reasons. But when you look at the moments at which there is a jump, both down and the recovery back up again, it does seem to mirror the key dates in the Andrew story. You know, he crashes when Andrew releases his statement. He recovers when Charles releases his. He crashes again when the Epstein files come out. So the big dates at which the timeline changes do appear to be dates connected to Andrew and Epstein. So like I said, you know, that's going to be hugely frustrating in Kensington Palace.

11:12But some good news for them is that actually Kate was, you know, completely unaffected and talked about universally positively throughout the timeline. So absolutely no dip, Andrew related dip at all for her. Obviously, there are always some highs and lows, but they don't appear in any way to be connected to Epstein or Andrew. Who knows what that was? It might just be fluctuations in how people were feeling, or maybe she did something on those specific dates. It's not super easy to tell, but all of it remains more positive than negative anyway. So her overarching, she was also discussed a lot less for what that's worth.

11:50Her overarching figure is 487.9 thousand total mentions, the total number of posts. So that's quite a bit below both Charles and William. Engagement was 21.9 million, which was down on the previous six months. Again, she played a role in the state visit, so that might have been a factor in her being discussed more in the six months before. Sentiment overall was more positive than negative, 23.8 % positive and 21.9 % negative, which is actually in a way, you know, the gap there between those two is closer than the graph itself looks like because the graph is green, it's in the green consistently throughout the whole six month period.

12:34And like I said, there's really no basis for seeing any particularly big fluctuation at the key dates in the Epstein story, which brings us on to Meghan and Harry. Meghan and Harry also appear completely unaffected by Andrew and Epstein. However, the bad news for them is that they were talked about very negatively. Meghan in particular, she was in the red consistently throughout the entire timeline. There were 1.7 million posts mentioning Meghan, which is actually a decrease on the six months before. Engagement was 41.4 million. So she's, you know, slightly below William in engagements, slightly above him in total posts, but it's all in and about the same ballpark.

13:24Her sentiment was 43.5 % negative and 19.9 % positive. So really a lot of negative commentary about Meghan. And, you know, none of it fueled by Epstein, but need to say those are quite depressing numbers, I think, for Harry and Meghan. And especially, you know, Meghan has a business to sell now. She has produce that she needs to sell. And it looks like she's got a very hostile audience to try and pitch to, basically. But she is still being talked about. And I suppose that will be a small glimmer of relief. And I do think that actually she just needs to reconcile herself with the fact that she's not hugely well liked and just get over it, basically.

14:03But let's talk a bit about Harry. so he had a very brief moment when he had his head back above the waterline and he wasn't being talked about um negatively anymore uh that for some reason was in december uh just yeah just before christmas i'm trying to think what that would have been i just i find it difficult to believe that it was the festive special of with love megan because that wasn't particularly about him anyway it might just be one of those things sometimes you just get these fluctuations maybe People were feeling particularly positive at that time, happy about Christmas and felt like being nicer to Harry for a bit.

14:37But he had his total posts was 1.3 million. Engagement was 29.2 million. Both of those were down a little bit on the six month before. Sentiment, 24.5 % positive, 35.9 % negative. So he was talked about more negatively than positively. And like I said, it was only really probably about a week that he had his head above the waterline the whole of the rest of the six month period. he was discussed more negatively than positively. So that is a bit of a kick in the teeth for Harry, especially because he'd just come off the back of that visit to Britain, which actually went quite well. That was in September.

15:11And he actually saw his father and he looked really happy and he did a whole load of in-person royal engagements that I thought went really well. But obviously a lot of the conversation is still negative. Now, I should say at this point that this is not opinion polling. This is just, you know, all of these things, opinion polls, these kinds of digital approaches to measuring public sentiment, like none of them are an exact perfect science. And, you know, some of those posts about William, for example, maybe they were talking very negatively about Andrew and mentioned William in some respect. And that would have been interpreted, no doubt, by the software as being a negative post about William.

15:56but these are just ways of adding an extra layer to our understanding of how the public perceive different famous figures they're not an exact science it's not completely perfect there is no completely perfect system for measuring how people feel it doesn't exist polling is its own thing it's very important neither particularly negates the other they're just different ways of measuring different things in the best means that we have available to us right now the only person other person to talk about is camilla again she has you know there is some negativity towards her i don't really see a huge correlation with the epstein files i guess there was there was a dip in positivity around the time um that andrew released his statement which took her just below break even just into the red momentarily and then within days she was back up and running again She did have a longer period.

16:53Her period in the red in 2026 actually came quite a bit before the release of the Epstein Files and doesn't exactly mirror Williams, which makes me think maybe it was tied to something else. I would struggle in this moment to put my finger on an identifiable cause. There is some negativity after the release of the Epstein Files, so that might have been connected. but her overarching numbers 857 ,000 mentions of her engagement at 30.5 million 20.7 % positive 27.2 % negative and she is for most of that for most of the set of the months in 2025 she's talked about more positively than negatively like I said just dips a whisker below break even in the days after Andrew released his statement and does seem to come back a little bit towards the end of October and then you know dips again and comes back up again in ways that don't seem tied to the Epstein timeline it is actually probably maybe even just a whisker before January that she dips back into negative territory and then she dips back up again at the very end of January going to February and then crashes down again and then is back up into positive territory by the time the period ends.

18:10So who knows? It's a bit harder to say with Camilla to what extent it actually is tied to Epstein and tied to Andrew. But either way, honestly, I think Camilla would probably actually be reasonably happy with those numbers because her polling is not great in and of itself. And so, you know, being discussed actually, probably if anything, you know, less negatively than William is a pretty good result for her. All things, you know, everything's relative and all things being equal. I think she'd probably take that. But there we are. Andrew, is it even worth saying? Let's just do it for the sake of it.

18:45Obviously, no surprise. Talked about relentlessly negatively. Total number of posts, 3.3 million, an increase on the previous month, a previous six months, sorry. Engagements, 52.8 million. So that's quite a high number. The sentiment, 3.5 % of those posts were marked as positive. Wasn't necessarily people saying they love Andrew, but was just deemed to be a message that contained positive sentiment rather than negative sentiment. 47.1 % reflected negative sentiment, and obviously his line is consistently in the red, although there's a very, very tiny amount of green at the very beginning, which who knows what the particular explanation or cause of that would be.

19:29It's not clear but you know the the timeline is overwhelmingly negative and it dips really quite close in the in the period after the epstein files really were released it dips really quite close to 100 negative i would say that's certainly in the 90s so there we go um it's yeah it's a tough break for william i mean you know this is it it's lonely at the top and um life isn't always fair and the media isn't always fair and public opinion isn't always fair but you just have to kind of take it on the chin and do what you can. I suppose the big thing that holds William back from taking kind of strong, deliberate action to rectify that situation and to get people to see his own actions more positively is taken away from him.

20:14He doesn't necessarily have that power because Charles is the key decision maker. On the other hand, what would William actually do now that there's a police investigation? There's probably not a huge amount he can do. I guess maybe there's still the fact that Andrew is living in Sandringham, but we know he's living on the King's estate in the King's house. So what's it got to do with William? Absolutely nothing. But there we are. You know, life is short and William, I'm sure, will have numerous opportunities to impact the way that people perceive him at other points in the future. And the polling does still show that he remains popular as a public figure.

20:48So I'm sure that will continue too. As for Harry and Meghan, what do they do to turn things around? I mean, I don't know. I think consistently showing up for charity is probably the best approach that they could take. And just understanding and accepting that it's going to be a long, long, long time before anybody really wants to change their minds. But, you know, consistency is super important. But this is also why some of the messaging can be really difficult when they have these moments of restraint collapse. and all of a sudden the messaging goes wonky and Harry starts complaining about his father or whatever it is.

21:24It damages the long, slow walk back to popularity and just sets them back again. So for them, that's it. I think consistency and restraint are probably the most important things for them. But it is going to be a slow process and I do not envy the people whose job it is to engineer that particular comeback. And that's it for this episode of The Royal Report. Be sure to join me every show when I visit the latest royal headlines, embark on some royal deep dives and riff on all things royal. Until next time, I'm Jack Royston. Thank you for listening and a curtsy to you all.

22:03The Royal Report with Jack Royston is a member of The Trust Project.