Prince Andrew has been stripped of his "prince" title and will leave his Windsor mansion, Royal Lodge, Buckingham Palace has announced.

The King has "initiated a formal process" to remove his titles, it said, and Andrew will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.

Andrew, 65 - the King's younger brother - has continued to face more questions about his private life in recent months.

His links to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein have caused problems for the Royal Family. The prince, who relinquished his titles this month, has always strongly denied any wrongdoing.

The dramatic fall from grace affects now just him but his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson and their children, Beatrice and Eugenie.

"His Majesty has today initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew," Buckingham Palace said in a statement on Thursday evening.

"Prince Andrew will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor."

It also addressed the place where he lives, Royal Lodge.

"His lease on Royal Lodge has, to date, provided him with legal protection to continue in residence.

"Formal notice has now been served to surrender the lease and he will move to alternative private accommodation. These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him.

"Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse."

The language of Buckingham Palace's statement was "very brutal," royal historian Kelly Swaby told the BBC.

"Ordinary people don't care about the semantics, they want to see punishment, and public opinion is very much against Andrew, the Palace knows that, and the language very much reflect that".

The decision was made, and action taken, due to serious lapses in Andrew's judgement, it is understood.

It is also understood that the wider Royal Family and the government was consulted, and made clear it supports the decision.

The BBC's former royal correspondent Jennie Bond said she thought the Prince of Wales had pushed for the recent action.

"I think this line had to be drawn and William was probably pushing for the King to do so," she said.

"William is about to go to Brazil on a very important tour - and the the recent tour by the King and Queen to the Vatican was very nearly overshadowed by what was going on with Andrew, and that could not be allowed to continue."

It is understood Andrew will be relocated to the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, but details about his specific housing have not been released.

The wider Sandringham estate covers approximately 20,000 acres (8,100 hectares) with 600 acres (242 hectares) of gardens - and the Palace has not said which property he will stay in.

It is understood that Andrew is unlikely to move into Sandringham's Wood Farm, his late father's former home.

Formal notice was given to surrender the lease at the Royal Lodge on Thursday and it is understood that Andrew's move to Sandringham will take place "as soon as practicable".

Andrew's ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, 66, will also move out of Royal Lodge and make her own living arrangements, it is understood.

She lost her courtesy royal divorcee title as a duchess in early October, when Andrew lost the use of his Duke of York title - reverting to her maiden name.

Though the public had long referred to her as "Fergie", royal commentator Richard Palmer told the BBC at the time the title change would "no doubt" have an impact.

"She will have lost a bit of cachet over this," he said. "She certainly does use the title – even her Twitter bio is @SarahTheDuchess."

For their daughters - Beatrice, 37 and Eugenie, 35 - there is no formal change.

They will still be princesses because they are the daughters of the son of a sovereign - in line with King George V's Letters Patent of 1917.

Their places in the line of succession will also stay the same.

Andrew remains eighth in line to the throne despite losing his titles - followed by Beatrice and Eugenie in ninth and twelfth place.

But their positions in the family are "low down" and will likely slip further with time, royal commentator Victoria Murphy said previously - adding that she could not see them, as non-working royals, step into official duties any time soon.

There was an "appreciation of the fact that this scandal doesn't involve them," she also said, "and it's not fair for it to impact them directly in the independent lives they are carving out for themselves".

It is understood Andrew's accommodation will be privately funded by the King.

And the King will make "appropriate private provision" for his brother as he moves out of his home.

Royal sources have previously said the King has tried to apply pressure, and last year cut off Andrew's funding.

Andrew also cultivated his own independent sources of funding since leaving public life, including business connections with China, the Gulf States and a recently curtailed project with a Dutch start-up company.

Earlier this week, Parliament's spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee wrote a letter detailing the "considerable and understandable public interest in the spending of public money" relating to Andrew.

The letter asked what the Crown Estate's plan was to ensure value for money in any future agreements with Andrew.

Andrew is understood not to have objected to the King's decision to remove his titles.

His birth certificate does not need to be changed and the title change will not apply retrospectively.

The titles being stripped are: Prince, Duke of York, Earl of Inverness, Baron Killyleagh. And he will no longer have the right to be called His Royal Highness. The honours of Order of the Garter and Knight Grand Cross of the Victorian Order will also be removed.

To remove the titles, the King will send Royal warrants to the Lord Chancellor - who is David Lammy - to officially remove them.

It comes just weeks after Andrew voluntarily gave up his other royal titles, including the Duke of York.

On 17 October, Andrew said he would stop using the titles because the "continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the Royal Family". "I vigorously deny the accusations against me," he said.

Until this month, Ferguson kept the title Sarah, Duchess of York - but she reverted to her maiden name of Ferguson after Andrew was stripped of his Duke of York title.

The surname Mountbatten Windsor was created in 1960, and combines the surnames of the late Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip when they married.

In 1917, fearful of the anti-German sentiment in the UK the reigning monarch, George V, adopted the name Windsor to replace the original Germanic sounding house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha dynasty.

He renamed the lineage Windsor, after the castle.

Mountbatten is an anglicised version of Battenberg. The Duke of Edinburgh's mother was Princess Alice of Battenberg, but during the First World War the family opted to change it to Mountbatten, again to avoid more anti-German sentiment.

The double-barrelled name was a concession to the Duke of Edinburgh, who was said to have complained that his children would not bear his name.

Historians tell the BBC Andrew will continue to be frozen out of royal public life.

He is already not invited to attend royal public events., and his recent appearances have been limited to private, family events, such as funerals or memorials.

This fiasco will continue to dog the royal family, says historian and author Andrew Lownie.

"They're finally getting ahead of the story, but this isn't the end of it," Lownie told the BBC.

The Palace is "finally taking some decisive action" - but it "won't completely satisfy the public disquiet".

Campaigners against the monarchy say there should be a wider investigation into what the Royal Family might have known about Prince Andrew's links to Epstein.

"This isn't just about family. It's not a private matter," says Graham Smith, chief executive of Republic.

Andrew's links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are at the centre of this latest announcement.

In recent weeks, pressure has increased on the monarchy to resolve the issue of Charles's brother, with the King heckled earlier this week by a protester.

Although Andrew denies the accusations, the Royal Family considers there have been "serious lapses of judgement" in his behaviour.

Earlier this month, emails from 2011 re-emerged, showing Andrew in contact with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein months after he claimed their friendship ended.

In her posthumous memoir, Nobody's Girl Virginia Giuffre repeated allegations that, as a teenager, she had sex with Andrew on three separate occasions – claims he has always denied.