Royals Who Stepped Back: A Global History of Abdications and Title Surrenders

Across the globe and through centuries, royals have walked away. Some fled scandal. Some chose love. Some simply decided the weight of the crown no longer fit, and that stepping down was the more honest choice than staying.

Prince Andrew's fall was the most recent and perhaps the most complete. In November 2019, after a disastrous BBC interview about his friendship with financier Jeffrey Epstein, the Queen's third son announced he would resign from public duties. "It has become clear to me that the circumstances relating to my former association with Jeffrey Epstein has become a major disruption to my family's work," he said in a carefully worded statement. For three years, he held on to his title as Duke of York, though Queen Elizabeth stripped his military honors and patronages in January 2022. But in October 2025, after unsealed court documents alleged he had groped a woman and after a woman's deposition claimed he had forced sexual relations with her when she was a minor, Andrew surrendered. He announced he would no longer use his royal titles and honors. Days later, King Charles made it official: Andrew was stripped of everything, evicted from the Royal Lodge where he had lived for decades, and now goes by Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. In March 2026, weeks after his arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office, he met with the Lord Chamberlain of the Royal Household. Speculation now swirls about whether he will be removed from the line of succession entirely.

But Andrew's story, for all its modern scandal, follows a pattern as old as monarchy itself. In 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated the British throne after less than a year to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcée. "I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love," he announced on the radio the day after signing the abdication papers. His younger brother became king. Edward was given the title Duke of Windsor and allowed to keep his style of His Royal Highness. Simpson received the title Duchess of Windsor but not the "Her Royal Highness" that Edward wanted for her until his death in 1972. She outlived him by fourteen years.

In January 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced they would step back as senior members of the British royal family. They moved first to Canada, then to southern California, where they are raising their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. Harry remains fifth in line to the throne, behind his brother William and William's three children. The couple's departure reshaped the modern conversation about what it means to be royal—whether duty must always outweigh personal wellbeing, whether the institution can bend to accommodate those who wish to live differently.

Other royals have surrendered titles for love or normalcy. Princess Mako of Japan married Kei Komuro, a man without royal blood, in October 2021 at a registry office. The wedding came four years after they declared their intent to marry, delayed by negative public sentiment, her father's withheld approval, and Komuro's enrollment at Fordham Law School in New York. Mako turned down the $1.3 million payment the government typically gives to royal women who lose their status through marriage. At the ceremony, she revealed she had developed PTSD from the constant media attacks. "For me, Kei is irreplaceable—marriage was a necessary choice for us," she said. The couple moved to New York, where Mako took a job assisting curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Komuro passed the New York bar exam in October 2022 on his third attempt. They welcomed their first child in 2025.

Princess Anne's children, Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall, were never given titles at all. When they were born, the Queen offered courtesy titles, but Anne and her then-husband Mark Phillips declined, wanting their children to have normal lives. "I think most people would argue that there are downsides to having titles," Anne told Vanity Fair in 2020. Zara, an accomplished equestrian who won a silver medal for Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics, later said she felt "very lucky" not to have a title, as it gave her more freedom than her cousins William and Harry.

Abdications driven by health or age have reshaped monarchies. Emperor Akihito of Japan abdicated in 2019 after thirty years on the throne, passing it to his oldest son, Emperor Naruhito. Akihito was the 125th emperor in a line stretching back more than 2,600 years, and his abdication was only the second in nearly two centuries. He had undergone prostate cancer surgery in 2003 and heart bypass surgery in 2012, and he worried he could no longer carry out his duties as the symbol of the state. Queen Margrethe II of Denmark reigned for fifty-two years—the longest run for any Scandinavian monarch—before announcing on New Year's Eve 2023 that she would abdicate just two weeks later. "The time takes its toll, and the number of ailments increases," she said. "One cannot undertake as much as one managed in the past." Her son became King Frederik X. King Juan Carlos I of Spain abdicated in 2014 after thirty-nine years, passing the throne to his son King Felipe VI. Five years later, at eighty-one, he retired from public duties entirely. In June 2020, he was investigated for alleged corruption involving $100 million in kickbacks from a Saudi rail project. He left Spain in self-imposed exile, writing to his son that he was leaving "to provide the best service to the Spaniards." Multiple fraud investigations were dropped in March 2022, and he returned to Spain for the first time in May, meeting his family after years away.

Some royals have stepped back not from the throne but from the institution itself. Princess Märtha Louise of Norway agreed in August 2019 to stop using her princess title for her business activities—specifically a speaking tour called "Princess and the Shaman" with her American fiancé, a spiritual guide and healer named Shaman Durek. In November 2022, she went further, relinquishing all her royal patronages and stepping back from her working role as a royal to create a clearer line between business and family duty. When she and Durek married in August 2024, he was not given a title, in keeping with tradition. The Swedish royal family took a different approach: in August 2019, King Carl XVI Gustaf removed the titles of Their Royal Highnesses from five of his grandchildren, though they retained the titles of prince and princess. These titles became personal and would not pass to their spouses or children. "It will hopefully be helpful when my grandchildren eventually carve out their own future," the king said in his 2019 Christmas speech. The decision did not apply to the children of Crown Princess Victoria, the heir to the throne, who will continue as members of the royal house.

These stories—from scandal to love to health to the simple desire for a different life—reveal a monarchy in flux. The institution that once demanded absolute obedience now accommodates those who choose to leave. Whether that flexibility strengthens or weakens the crown remains an open question.