Prince Andrew 'More Of A Headache' Than Prince Harry, Meghan Markle For Royal Family: Expert

Prince Andrew is a bigger problem for the royal family than Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, according to a royal commentator.

TalkTV's royal correspondent Rupert Bell weighed in on the issue plaguing the Duke of York. Just recently, a judge ruled that all materials related to Johanna Sjoberg be unsealed in an order signed on Monday. They would be accessible to the public from Jan. 1 onwards, and many netizens claimed this would be a nightmare for Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice's dad. Bell shared the same sentiment, even saying he's "more of a headache" than the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

"Yeah, he's far more of a headache than Meghan and Harry. That is so proper with the sort of family breakdown between the Sussexes and the royal family," he said on TalkTV. 

"This is a far more serious problem for the royal family to deal with because these are very serious allegations, and obviously, he's already paid $12 million to Virginia Giuffre to try with an out-of-court settlement."

He added that unsealing the documents would likely attract more issues and would be a bigger issue for the royal family to solve.

"And it really is a problem because these allegations keep surfacing, and obviously, when we get revelations about some of the other names that might be linked to this in a couple of weeks' time. It will always compound the problem," Bell continued. 

"So the royal family, in terms of dealing with the Harry and Meghan one, well, that's relatively straightforward. That's just a family having a few wars in a sort of, in a way. But this is different, and how does the royal family manage those optics through Christmas and going forward because we only tend to see him now at the sort of private/public functions, appearing at Christmas Day for the walk to church and those kind of occasions."

The royal family hasn't released any statement regarding Prince Andrew, who is no longer a working royal. In 2021, the late Queen Elizabeth stripped him of his royal patronages and military titles. The palace also released a statement announcing he would be "defending this case as a private citizen." 

Prince Andrew denied the sexual assault allegations. However, he settled the case for an undisclosed amount in February 2021.