Queen Elizabeth's Frustrations With Prince Charles Lead to Surprising Favoritism in Royal Family

While The Crown takes plenty of creative liberties with the modern Royal Family events, one aspect that the Netflix show nails is the fraught relationship that the Queen has with her eldest son, Prince Charles. The new Channel 4 documentary, Queen Elizabeth: Love, Honour and Crown, aired in the UK on Sunday night, and the special delved into the issues that the two of them have and the fact that the Queen "has never really understood" her heir.

"To this day, she's more openly affectionate to Andrew and more forgiving toward Andrew than she is towards Charles," Clive Irving, author of the new biography The Last Queen, explains in the doc. This favoritism is apparent, especially in how Prince Andrew has largely been shielded from consequences despite his close connections to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the allegations of sexual abuse.

In the documentary, Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, describes Andrew as "noisy, bumptious," but also "very charming, when he wants to be. He can be arrogant and rude; he has some characteristics of his own father [Prince Philip]." Seward said that Charles was "the polar opposite to younger brother Andrew," while Irving believes that Charles "will never live up to the queen's sense of duty. All those around the queen never measure up to that at any point. Her own family has not measured up to that. Charles never measures up to that."

The Queen's indulgence of Prince Andrew was grossly apparent in how she handled the scandal with Epstein. "In her close to seven decades on the throne, the Queen of England has rarely faltered in her sense of duty or made a serious misstep," political journalist Rosa Prince wrote in an opinion piece for CNN in early 2020. "She is doing both now, however — not in her treatment of her grandson, Harry, and his wife Meghan, who made their last public appearance as senior royals this week, but, more insidiously, her handling of another problematic relative, her son Prince Andrew, the Duke of York."

"The queen should display the sacrifice and sense of duty which have been the hallmarks of her reign by removing from the duke all remaining vestiges of the privilege of serving as a member of the royal family—yes, even if as an ordinary British citizen he is exposed to an extradition request by the U.S.," Prince explained. Andrew did decide to step down from his duties as a royal in November 2019. Still, royal expert Katie Nicholl explained that he had no other options, considering the terrible optics.

"My sources at Buckingham Palace are insisting that it was the duke's decision and that the statement reflects that," Nicholl told ET. "He says in that, that it's his decision to step down with the Queen's approval… Reading between the lines, it is my understanding that Andrew understood he had to go. It was made very clear to him in that meeting between him and the queen that he had no choice but to step down from royal duties."

"It must have been incredibly hard for the queen, his mother -- Andrew is widely regarded to be her favorite son — but she recognized that there was a huge amount of damage being done to the monarchy," Nicholl continued. "He had no option, the queen had no option, but for Andrew to step back from royal duties." With more and more details about the inner workings of the Royal Family coming out following Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's interview, that favoritism has never been more stark.