A new book is claiming that Prince Andrew was lured into the sordid world of the late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein after becoming “fascinated” by the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.

In her biography of Andrew’s father “Prince Philip Revealed,” royal expert Ingrid Seward revealed that he was introduced to Maxwell by his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson. Seward alleged that it was the socialite’s “worldly sophistication” that first drew Andrew into a friendship that would eventually leave him “emotionally battered.”

“His ex-wife Sarah introduced him to the late Sir Robert Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine and Andrew was fascinated by her worldly sophistication,” Seward said, according to Newsweek. “Ghislaine, in turn, introduced the duke to a previously out-of-bounds, raunchy international lifestyle, and he was fascinated by it.”

“It suited her to be able to produce Prince Andrew at parties and she hosted dinners for him at her ‘sometime partner’ the financier Jeffrey Epstein’s Upper East Side apartment in New York,” the expert added. “Ghislaine took Andrew wherever he was willing to go, but still naively the duke failed to see he was being used.”

Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the alleged former sex slave of Epstein, has claimed that she was forced to have sex with Andrew on three separate occasions, including once when she was an underage 17 year-old. Andrew has repeatedly denied that he ever had sex with Giuffre.

Last year, Andrew attempted to move past the scandal by addressing it in an interview with the BBC’s Emily Maitlis, but this backfired when he was hit with such heavy criticism for the comments he made that he was forced to officially step back from public life.

“A calamitous interview for BBC TV’s Panorama, in which he failed to show regret or empathy for Epstein’s young victims — one of whom has alleged she had sex with him — lost him any vestige of support he still had,” Seward wrote. “It also turned him into a global figure of ridicule. He was seen as someone with immense privilege who took advantage of his position, and because of stupidity and immense arrogance simply couldn’t be bothered to take care, when choosing his friends, to keep his nose clean.”

She added that Philip was so upset about the way Andrew behaved that he felt his son’s upbringing was “woefully inadequate.”

“For Philip and the Queen, their son’s failure of judgment was a tragedy,” Seward wrote. “Not only had he besmirched the reputation of the monarchy but had become involved in something extremely distasteful and far more serious.”