The Daily Beast The enduring mystery about Jeffrey Epstein isn’t simply how he operated, it’s why so many powerful men wanted to be near him. Strip away the legal files and the lurid headlines, and what you find is something far older and more human: the hunger for relevance, access, and the feeling that somewhere else something more exciting is happening without you. For Prince Andrew , after being marooned for years in the ceremonial twilight of royal life, Epstein must have felt like an electric current. After he’d finished in the Royal Navy, the royal circuit offered duty, deference, and an endless rotation of polite lunches with aging patrons and cautious handlers. Epstein offered the opposite of duty and deference. Living in a 40-room townhouse in Manhattan, Epstein had all the trappings of royalty with none of the obligations. Instead of old dowagers and ribbon cuttings, there were private jets, Harvard and MIT professors, billionaire tech founders, late-night conversations, and the seductive promise that here, at last, was the real action. Read more at The Daily Beast.