🔗 Share this article

The saga started with a single photograph, arguably the most significant ever snapped of a royal family member.

Present was the Earl of Inverness, arm-in-arm a young woman, while a companion smiled knowingly in the background.

Lacking that photograph, shot at a party in 2001, few would have credited the allegations of a adolescent who said she was trafficked across the sea and forced to have perfunctory intimate contact with a prince of the royal bloodline?

An odd, telling action by someone who had publicly claimed to have not known about her, said he could not have had sex with her, and yet handed over millions of his mother's funds to avert a long-delayed court action.

A Long Period of Scandal

In this context, talk of the royal family acting decisively to sever ties with Andrew are inaccurate. This scandal has continued for the majority of 15 years since that image, and a further snapshot of Andrew walking amiably with a convicted sex offender came to light.

• Arrogance: For what duration did his brothers and sisters, perhaps even his relatives, realize that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Questionable Associations: They must have understood, if his employees and the authorities were fulfilling their roles, that he had some extremely unsavory friends given he unabashedly invited them to palaces.
• Financial Extravagance: If the monarchy did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his extravagance with public money.

Journeys were printed in official documents: private aircraft transfers from the estate to a sporting venue and back again in time for dining, exclusive air travel instead of commercial flights, all for the comfort of "Airmiles Andy".

World of Deference

Furthermore the presumption which demanded subservience when he walked into a space or the profound consciousness about his royal titles used on his correspondence in letters to his friends.

He managed to escape consequences while his mother, who strangely indulged him, was still surviving. The sovereign did at least remove him of official roles and ceremonial ranks in the aftermath of his disastrous and, it is now clear, deceptive public statement six years ago.

Recent Developments

It was only in the last fortnight that events accelerated, following the issuance of accounts giving more troubling particulars of his behavior and that of his companions.

More information have again revealed Andrew's thinking that he could escape deceiving about his contact with a notorious figure.

People (and the press) were far ahead of the monarchy. There was not a single person of any significance to support him, a result of all those years of arrogance.

Royal Worries

The wiser family members understood that. The primary concern is to hand down the crown, if not as previously at least complete and unblemished.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to overcome the image of previous monarchs, showing they are useful, dutiful and reactive to their subjects.

Andrew was putting all that in danger in an age when submission and privacy is no longer adequate.

Consequences

Ultimately, the notoriously indecisive monarch was pushed further. There was little choice. The royal household had lost control of the narrative.

Currently the loss of titles and the persistent and permanent personal shame that will pain Andrew most severely.

• Reduction: Lowered to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Past Example: The initial monarch to forfeit his titles in modern times
• Armed Forces: Particularly painful given his service in the engagement

He continues to be a counsellor of state, on paper able to act for the sovereign, and he is still in the succession to the monarchy, but none of these will truly occur.

Future Prospects

Will people he encounters still defer to him? Might they still slip up and call him Sir? Would they say Andrew,

Of course, he is not withdrawing to a common area, but to the monarchy's large grounds at a monarchical property.

At that location, he will be supplied by the monarch with one of the grace and favour houses and given some type of personal stipend.

This is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a nominal lease for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit far, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Pending Matters

The situation continues. There are still documents in the custody of US Congress to be made public.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Will lawmakers seek further action
• Fiscal Review: Or investigate the waste of public money
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a police investigation into his conduct

Possibly for the moment the institutional damage to the institution is contained. The message from the institution was plainly that the stripping of designations was what the king, and especially other senior monarchical figures, wanted.

Changed Stance

No more illusion that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, remarkably, the short communication showed plainly that the royals were supporting the accuser's account of events.

Additionally, for the first time they finally showed regard for the victims: "The measures are deemed necessary, despite the fact that he maintains his innocence of the claims against him."

Finally it is entitlement, self-seeking and inactivity that will kill the monarchy. In his folly, personal excess and venality, Andrew seems never to have grasped that truth.