🔗 Share this article

The saga started with a isolated photograph, possibly the most impactful ever captured of a individual from the royal household.

There stood the Baron Killyleagh, standing closely beside a young woman, while another individual grinned knowingly in the backdrop.

Absent that snapshot, taken at a gathering in 2001, few would have credited the allegations of a teenager who said she was trafficked across the ocean and forced to have brief relations with a individual of the royal family?

A strange, telling action by someone who had openly asserted to have not been aware of her, claimed he could no have had sex with her, and yet paid a large amount of his mother's money to avert a drawn-out lawsuit.

Over a Decade of Controversy

In this context, talk of the royals acting firmly to sever ties with Andrew are wide of the mark. This controversy has continued for the majority of 15 years since that image, and an additional snapshot of Andrew ambling pleasantly with a notorious individual surfaced.

• Self-importance: How long did his siblings, possibly even his parents, realize that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have understood, if his employees and the authorities were performing their duties, that he had some extremely unsavory friends given he unabashedly welcomed them to royal residences.
• Monetary Excess: If the family did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his overspending with public money.

Journeys were printed in royal annual reports: helicopter flights from the royal residence to a country club and back again in time for midday meal, private flights instead of scheduled services, all for the comfort of "the travel enthusiast".

Existence of Entitlement

Furthermore the arrogance which required respect when he walked into a space or the supreme awareness about his royal titles used on his correspondence in messages to his associates.

He could get away with it while his matriarch, who unaccountably pampered him, was still surviving. The Queen did at least strip him of public duties and honorary colonelcies in the aftermath of his catastrophic and, as revealed, untruthful television interview six years ago.

Current Situation

Just in the last fortnight that events sped up, following the issuance of books giving more grim particulars of his conduct and that of his companions.

Further disclosures have again highlighted Andrew's thinking that he could get away with lying about his contact with a disgraced individual.

Society (and the press) were far more perceptive of the royal family. There was no one of any importance to support him, a consequence of all those years of presumption.

Institutional Fears

The wiser monarchical figures recognized that. The one imperative is to hand down the institution, if not as previously at least whole and unstained.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to reverse the image of past sovereigns, proving they are useful, accountable and reactive to their subjects.

His actions endangered all that in peril in an era when respect and discretion is no longer enough.

Aftermath

Eventually, the notoriously indecisive king was pressured additional. There was no alternative. The royal household had surrendered command of the account.

Presently the loss of titles and the persistent and life-long public humiliation that will pain Andrew most severely.

• Demotion: Lowered to just a commoner
• Historical Precedent: The initial member to forfeit his honorifics in contemporary era
• Military Service: Particularly hurtful given his role in the engagement

He remains a counsellor of state, theoretically able to act for the monarch, and he is still eighth in line to the throne, but neither of these will truly occur.

Coming Developments

Can persons he comes across still defer to him? Will they still make mistakes and call him Sir? Will they even say Andrew,

Certainly, he is not retiring to an ordinary town, but to the royal family's extensive grounds at Sandringham.

There, he will be furnished by the king with one of the royal residences and given some sort of personal stipend.

It is not his former home, where he paid a token rent for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit remote, but even so it may not be far enough.

Unresolved Issues

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

• Political Pressure: Might lawmakers seek further action
• Financial Investigation: Or scrutinize the misuse of state resources
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his behavior

Perhaps for the time being the institutional damage to the institution is limited. The statement from the palace was clearly that the stripping of honorifics was what the sovereign, and particularly other senior royals, sought.

Changed Stance

The cessation of deception that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, notably, the concise announcement showed clearly that the institution were aligning with the victim's narrative of occurrences.

Furthermore, for the first time they eventually showed regard for the victims: "The censures are considered essential, despite the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him."

Ultimately it is presumption, selfishness and inactivity that will undermine the monarchy. In his foolishness, personal excess and venality, Andrew appears never to have learned that lesson.