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The saga started with a single photograph, perhaps the most impactful ever taken of a royal family member.

There stood the Baron Killyleagh, arm-in-arm a teenage girl, while a companion smiled knowingly in the background.

Lacking that image, shot at a gathering in 2001, few would have credited the allegations of a young woman who declared she was trafficked across the Atlantic and obliged to have brief relations with a individual of the monarchy?

A strange, revealing action by someone who had openly asserted to have not been aware of her, asserted he could no have had sex with her, and yet handed over a large amount of family funds to settle a protracted court action.

Years of Disgrace

In this context, talk of the monarchy acting decisively to sever ties with Andrew are inaccurate. This controversy has endured for the majority of 15 years since that picture, and a further snapshot of Andrew strolling amiably with a notorious individual came to light.

• Arrogance: To what extent did his brothers and sisters, perhaps even his mother and father, realize that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Problematic Connections: They must have understood, if his staff and the law enforcement were performing their duties, that he had some extremely unsavory friends given he unabashedly welcomed them to estates.
• Financial Extravagance: If the household did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his extravagance with public money.

Trips were listed in royal annual reports: private aircraft flights from the estate to a country club and back again in time for dining, chartered planes instead of commercial flights, all for the comfort of "Airmiles Andy".

World of Deference

Additionally the arrogance which demanded respect when he entered a space or the extreme obsession about his honorifics used on his official documents in communication to his friends.

He managed to escape consequences while his parent, who unaccountably indulged him, was still surviving. The sovereign did at least remove him of official roles and military positions in the aftermath of his disastrous and, we now know, untruthful public statement six years ago.

Recent Developments

Merely in the last two weeks that events progressed rapidly, following the issuance of biographical works giving more grim information of his conduct and that of his companions.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's assumption that he could avoid deceiving about his contact with a disgraced individual.

The public (and the press) were far in advance of the royals. There was nobody of any importance to defend him, a outcome of all those years of presumption.

Royal Worries

The more astute family members realized that. The key objective is to transfer the monarchy, if not as previously at least intact and untarnished.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to overcome the image of past sovereigns, demonstrating they are useful, responsible and reactive to their subjects.

His actions endangered all that in danger in an age when submission and discretion is no longer adequate.

Consequences

Eventually, the notoriously hesitant monarch was pressured further. There was little choice. The royal household had surrendered command of the narrative.

Now it is the removal of titles and the ongoing and permanent social disgrace that will afflict Andrew the most.

• Reduction: Lowered to just a private citizen
• Past Example: The initial royal to surrender his designations in modern times
• Armed Forces: Notably stinging given his service in the Falklands war

He continues to be a royal advisor, theoretically able to substitute for the king, and he is still in the lineage to the crown, but none of these will truly occur.

Coming Developments

Can persons he comes across still show respect to him? Could they still make mistakes and call him Your Highness? Might they say Sir,

Of course, he is not withdrawing to suburbia, but to the royal family's vast property at Sandringham.

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

This differs from his prior accommodation, where he paid a nominal payment for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit distant, but even so it may not be adequate distance.

Pending Matters

The situation continues. There are still files in the hands of American legislators to be revealed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Will parliament request additional information
• Financial Investigation: Or investigate the waste of public money
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a police investigation into his conduct

Maybe for the moment the reputational impact to the crown is limited. The message from the palace was clearly that the stripping of honorifics was what the king, and especially other senior royals, wanted.

A Shift in Position

The cessation of pretence that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, significantly, the brief statement showed evidently that the royals were supporting the complainant's narrative of events.

Even more, for the premiere occasion they finally showed concern for the survivors: "The censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he maintains his innocence of the allegations against him."

In the end it is entitlement, self-seeking and indolence that will kill the monarchy. In his stupidity, self-indulgence and greed, Andrew appears never to have understood that truth.