The Windsor taboo breaks: What the UK royal arrest means

The detention of the King’s brother and Britain’s moment of reckoning

February 19, 2026, will undoubtedly enter British history. Whether it will also come to be seen as a marker of the British Empire’s final unraveling remains an open question. That discussion can wait. For now, the facts themselves are striking enough.

At eight o’clock on Thursday morning, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the younger brother of King Charles III and the former Prince Andrew...