In every fairytale worth their singing birds and pumpkin coaches, when the heroine meets a prince, she is usually left awestruck and swooning.

But when 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre met a prince, the teenager was “terrified” and “left shaking with fear,” according to a new report.

The prince in this story, as you know, is not some dreamy charmer but a man with a notorious history, Prince Andrew, who is no longer allowed to sign into his golf club as the ‘Duke of York’ but still drives around Windsor with his custom “DoY” number plates on his Range Rover.

A former teenage boyfriend of Giuffre, who had played a “big part” in her life for years, has spoken out about what he claims happened in the hours and days after the teenager was allegedly sexually abused for the first time by the then 41-year-old Andrew.

Virginia Giuffre with ex-boyfriend Tony Figueroa in 2000. Picture: SPLASH / BACKGRID

The prince has always denied Giuffre’s claims and has never been charged with any wrongdoing.

Tony Figueroa, now 43, was in a relationship with Giuffre when she was flown to London in March 2001 by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. He told The Sun that the day after she was allegedly assaulted by Andrew, Giuffre “thought she could be killed.”

“I remember that call clearly. She was terrified,” Figueroa told The Sun.

She told him that she “didn’t want to” have sex with Andrew and “I don’t know what I could have done – what can I do? He’s a prince!”

Figueroa said: “Her voice was shaking the whole time. I was also absolutely terrified something would happen to her.

We talked about the death of Diana. This man was so powerful, he was literally a prince.

What could I have done? I wasn’t in the country. Who would believe me if something bad happened to her?”

Giuffre also writes about this same phone call in her posthumously released, number-one bestselling memoir Nobody’s Girl.

She recounted: “When I was sure I couldn’t be overheard, I called Tony and told him what had happened. I hadn’t wanted to have sex with the prince, I said, but I felt I had to.

Figueroa recalls the alleged phone conversation very well. Picture: ITV

That night Tony’s voice sounded worried. He was scared that I was alone in a foreign country with people so powerful; he said he understood why I felt powerless.”

She said they talked about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, only a few years earlier.

“Tony and I had no way of knowing if this was true, but we were sure that I was surrounded by people who wielded vastly more clout than I ever would,” she writes.

The world has been captivated by her story. Picture: Supplied

That same month, March 2001, back in Florida, Giuffre took the Kodak FunSaver disposable camera she had brought to London to be developed.

On it was the picture Epstein had snapped of the prince with his arm around the bare waist of a girl he allegedly told, “My daughters are just a little younger than you.”

Figueroa later refuted Andrew’s claim in an interview that the photo of him with Virginia was fake.

“I held the photograph in my hands. She was going through all the pictures and showed it to me. It was just in there with the rest,” he said.

(Andrew had said in a Newsnight interview about the photo: “I don’t remember that photograph ever being taken. I don’t remember going upstairs in the house.”)

Giuffre writes in Nobody’s Girl: “I showed the four-by-six-inch photo to Tony. At the time, we were both just glad I’d made it home in one piece; we had no idea what a commotion this photo would later cause.”

That photo changed everything. Without it, Andrew could likely have avoided facing consequences for his ties to a convicted sex offender.

Without that photo, there would have been no widely accepted proof that in 2001, Queen Elizabeth’s son met a teenage girl being sex trafficked by his old friends Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein.

That photo prevented Andrew from evading accountability during the downfall of Epstein and Maxwell.

Prince Andrew pictured with a teenage Virginia Giuffre. Picture: SDNY) / AFP

There is an alternate reality where Giuffre hadn’t “suddenly” thought her mother “would never forgive me if I met someone as famous as Prince Andrew and didn’t pose for a picture,” in which Andrew could have dodged Epstein’s downfall and remained a frontline, official member of the royal family.

The story of how the photo emerged and the mystery of where it is now is fascinating.

By early February 2011, journalist Sharon Churcher had begun tracking down the identity of the woman known only as Jane Doe 02, who had sued Epstein alleging she was “sexually exploited by Defendant’s adult male peers, including royalty.”

Paedophile Jeffrey Epstein with Ghislaine Maxwell. Picture: US District Court for the Southern District of New York / AFP

Flavio Briatore and Naomi Campbell at her 31st birthday party in St Tropez with Virginia Giuffre is in the foreground. Picture: Getty Images

Churcher’s investigation led her to Figueroa and then to Giuffre.

During the conversation, Giuffre mentioned meeting Andrew and said, “I think I still have a photo of him and me together.”

Churcher immediately booked a flight from New York to Sydney and told her she “didn’t sleep during the entire twenty-four-hour journey because she worried I wouldn’t be able to find the photograph.”

“Her jet lag disappeared when I greeted her at my front door with an envelope I had stashed in a bookcase. Inside were several snapshots from my time with Epstein and Maxwell.

The photo of Prince Andrew with his arm around me was among them.”

During Churcher’s trip, freelance photographer Michael Thomas shot Giuffre holding the hard copy of the Andrew photo at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Terrigal, 90 minutes north of Sydney.

At the time, Giuffre was still debating whether she wanted to publicly reveal herself as Jane Doe 02.

Andrew denied all allegations against him.

Then, on February 20, 2011, the now-defunct News of the World ran the infamous photo of Andrew and Epstein walking in Central Park together with the headline “PRINCE ANDY & THE PAEDO.”

Prince Andrew had denied the allegations against him. Picture: Adrian DENNIS / AFP

Giuffre then contacted Churcher to say she was ready to go on the record, and on February 27, Churcher’s story and the photo were published by the Mail on Sunday.

It sent shockwaves worldwide, providing tangible evidence that the adult son of the Queen had spent time with a sex trafficking victim.

Emails released this month reveal that the day after, February 28, Andrew emailed Epstein to say they would “play some more soon,” proving he had lied about how long he had stayed in contact with the pedophile.

The story of the photo doesn’t end there.

Prince Andrew in his younger days. Picture: Dave Benett/Getty Images

On March 17, 2011, Giuffre writes, she was interviewed by the FBI for the first time, speaking for hours at the American consulate in Sydney.

The next day, “two FBI agents came to our house, where I handed over twenty photographs taken during my time with Epstein and Maxwell. The photo with Prince Andrew was among them.”

She never got the original photo back, and it has never been seen since.

In April of this year, Giuffre died by suicide.

This past weekend, in Atlanta, Georgia, where Figueroa now lives, he told The Sun he is not optimistic that Andrew will face “proper punishment.”

“Basically nothing is happening. So he’s not a duke anymore? Wow, is that it? Where is she now? Yeah, that’s not any kind of justice. I honestly don’t think anything’s going to happen. I’m not saying I’ve given up hope, but it’s just slaps on the wrist,” he said.