A man who once stood among the most powerful figures in the British royal family is now the subject of yet another police inquiry — and this one stretches back more than two decades.
Thames Valley Police have confirmed they are investigating an allegation involving Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and a woman who worked as a waitress at Royal Ascot in 2002.
The annual horse racing festival, one of England’s most celebrated and tradition-steeped events, drew a high-profile royal crowd that year. Queen Elizabeth, the future King Charles, Prince Edward, and Mountbatten-Windsor’s eldest daughter, Princess Beatrice, were all in attendance at the Berkshire gathering.
It remains unknown whether the woman reported the alleged incident to authorities at the time it occurred or whether the complaint was filed more recently.
Detectives at Thames Valley Police are treating the Royal Ascot allegation as one piece of a much larger puzzle currently being assembled around the former prince.
The force confirmed on May 22, 2026, that its ongoing probe into Mountbatten-Windsor reaches well beyond what many initially assumed.
Investigators are pursuing potential crimes including sexual misconduct, corruption, and fraud — all connected to the King’s younger brother, according to The Sunday Times.
A Thames Valley Police spokeswoman stated: “We cannot go into specifics of our ongoing investigation, but we are following all reasonable lines of inquiry.”
The department also issued a public call for anyone holding relevant information about potential sexual abuse, corruption, fraud, or breaches of confidentiality tied to Mountbatten-Windsor to step forward.
This latest development comes on the heels of a dramatic February arrest.
Officers arrived at Mountbatten-Windsor’s residence on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk on February 19, 2026 — the morning of his 66th birthday — and took him into custody on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was later released under investigation.
That arrest centered on allegations that Mountbatten-Windsor passed along classified information connected to his decade-long role as a British government trade envoy to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Following his arrest, police conducted a six-day search of Royal Lodge, his former sprawling Windsor residence, as well as a search of his Norfolk home at Wood Farm, where he had been taken into custody.
Epstein, who had maintained a long and well-documented association with Mountbatten-Windsor, died in a New York jail cell in 2019.
The fallout from that association has proven relentless. King Charles moved to strip his brother of all royal titles amid the mounting Epstein-related scandal.
Mountbatten-Windsor and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, were subsequently forced out of Royal Lodge, the Windsor property the pair had long called home. He now carries no royal title and goes by the name Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
The Ascot allegation is far from the first time the former royal has faced accusations involving women. Mountbatten-Windsor was accused by Virginia Giuffre of sexually abusing her when she was a minor.
Giuffre alleged she had been sex-trafficked by Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. Mountbatten-Windsor denied the accusations outright but later reached a multimillion-dollar civil settlement with Giuffre, who died by suicide in April 2025.
Andrew Lownie, author of Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, told Page Six that troubling behavior by Mountbatten-Windsor is nothing new.
“His chat-up line was, ‘What’s it feel like to have the royal c–k against your thigh?’” Lownie alleged in a recent interview. “I mean, just [an] extraordinary sense of entitlement, right?”
Lownie further alleged that there are “just lots and lots of stories” of Mountbatten-Windsor behaving badly toward women, and that the former royal carries “a strong sense of entitlement” while appearing to take pleasure in humiliating women.
Mountbatten-Windsor has denied all wrongdoing.
