Royal Discretion

Whatever lessons our Mother of Democracies may have learned from the case of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Gentleman, it appears that Norway has yet to absorb them. The son of the local Crown Princess is to face trial on charges of illegal sneak-filming, domestic violence and four counts of rape, though he apparently denies everything except a minority of the violence. On the mainland, of course, the idea of putting Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on trial was always a self-evident absurdity: the Crown Prosecution Service can hardly be expected to turn the monarch's relative into a mere subject of inquiry. Instead the matter was dealt with internally, with a few Ruritanianisms lopped off the mode of address and a certain enforced economy of accommodation. As a result, not only has the taxpayer been spared the expense and prurient temptations of a trial; but the nation's overstretched and under-resourced women's health and rights organisations, unlike their Norwegian counterparts, have not been inconvenienced by a sudden surge in business.