Allegations about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s links to Jeffrey Epstein have unfolded over several years – and in several pictures. Here is how they have dripped into the public’s consciousness and kept the pressure on the royal family.

The picture with ‘no innocent explanation’

It was taken in 2001, but it did not become public for another decade. The fallout is lasting much longer.

The picture (above) – taken by Epstein, of Mountbatten-Windsor with his arm around a 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre while the now-convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell stood at their side – put Andrew, even if he spent years denying it, in a room with a girl who later claimed he sexually abused her while she was a minor.

It was a pose that had “no innocent explanation”, Wendy Murphy, a former sex crimes prosecutor, said. For years, Andrew insisted he believed the picture had been doctored. Emails released with the Epstein files this year appeared to contradict that.

In 2022, Mountbatten-Windsor settled a civil case Giuffre brought in New York alleging he had sexually assaulted her on three occasions, though he made no admission of liability and has always denied Giuffre’s allegations.

The walk in the park

“Just what is the 4th in line to the throne doing meeting a convicted child-sex pervert … even if he is a billionaire?” asked the subheading on page seven of the News of the World on 20 February 2011. The story was based on a picture of Mountbatten-Windsor strolling around New York with Epstein, taken in 2010.

It was a reasonable question. It was difficult to imagine Mountbatten-Windsor had simply missed the news of the financier’s conviction and imprisonment for soliciting prostitution from a minor two years prior to the meeting.

Mountbatten-Windsor’s answer, when asked by Emily Maitlis eight years after the photo emerged, was that he had visited Esptein to sever contact; feeling the honourable thing to do was to tell him in person.

His story was undermined when it emerged he had emailed Epstein upon publication of the Giuffre photograph in 2011 to say: “We are in this together”. In the email, which came to light last year, Mountbatten-Windsor wrote: “Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon.”

The female on the floor

When the US justice department released a cache of more than 3m documents related to the Epstein case last month, pictures emerged of Mountbatten-Windsor crouching over an unidentified female lying supine on the floor.

In one, he can be seen with his hand on the female’s stomach. In another, a smiling Mountbatten-Windsor is seen kneeling above her. He is looking at the camera and has his hands resting either side of her torso. The images are undated, have no captions or reference to indicate where they were taken, and do not indicate wrongdoing.

The arrest

“Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, younger brother of Britain’s King Charles, formerly known as Prince Andrew, leaves Aylsham police station on a vehicle, on the day he was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office,” the Reuters caption reads.

It is a fairly bald statement, but it has centuries of history behind it. This is, after all, a picture of the first royal to be arrested since Charles I in 1647.

The image was taken by the photographer Phil Noble after Mountbatten-Windsor was released under investigation after being held by police for more than 10 hours.

“He took six frames in all – two showed police, two were blank, one was out of focus,” Reuters said. “But one captured the unprecedented nature of the moment: for the first time in modern history, a senior royal was being treated as a common criminal.”