Well, well, well. As Wilford Brimley observed in Absence of Malice … “wonderful thing, subpoenas.” With a hostile deposition ahead of him and no escape route left, Prince Andrew did what everyone expected. He opened the royal purse and bought his way out of danger:

Prince Andrew, the disgraced second son of Queen Elizabeth II, has settled a lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre, a woman who had accused him of raping her when she was a teenage victim of Andrew’s friend, the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to a new court filing in Manhattan on Tuesday.

The amount that Andrew, 61, will pay Ms. Giuffre is confidential, the parties said in a joint statement attached to the filing.

Andrew also “intends to make a substantial donation” to a charity “in support of victims’ rights,” the statement says.

The deal comes just weeks before Andrew was scheduled to sit for a deposition, in which he would have been questioned under oath by Ms. Giuffre’s lawyers. Andrew did not admit to any of Ms. Giuffre’s accusations against him in the statement announcing the settlement.

This still seems a little surprising, in both directions. Andrew and his attorneys had a pretty decent argument that Virginia Giuffre’s settlement with Jeffrey Epstein covered Andrew and any of Epstein’s other co-conspirators — er, pals. Giuffre had long insisted that the payday was secondary to public accountability for Andrew’s participation in Epstein’s sex trafficking.

The decision by Andrew may be easier to understand. That argument on the earlier Epstein-Giuffre agreement would have to be made at trial, which means Andrew would have to sit for the deposition and risk a perjury charge if he tried to lie his way out of the lawsuit. A settlement, even a very expensive one, gets him out of even worse legal trouble — or the public humiliation of having to admit in a deposition that he’s been lying through his teeth all along.

As for Giuffre, she may still have gotten a taste of that public accountability from Andrew. His team issued this statement a few minutes ago:

“Prince Andrew intends to make a substantial donation to Ms. Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights. Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre’s character, and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks. It is known that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked countless young girls over many years. Prince Andrew regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms. Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others. He pledges to demonstrate his regret for his association with Epstein by supporting the fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims.”

That’s a lot different than the way Prince Andrew’s attorneys described Giuffre three months ago:

“Giuffre has initiated this baseless lawsuit against Prince Andrew to achieve another payday at his expense and at the expense of those closest to him,” Andrew’s lawyers wrote then. “Most people could only dream of obtaining the sums of money that Giuffre has secured for herself over the years.”

We can probably assume that comment cost Andrew and The Royal Family Inc a few more dollars than otherwise might have been required. Giuffre will have more resources for her charity, but hopefully also for herself. And the defenders of Andrew will have a whooooole lot of explaining to do after this capitulation, too.

Give Andrew credit, however, for finally doing the smart thing … after he exhausted all the other possibilities. If he’s learned any lessons at all, this should be the last public comment of his life.