🔗 Share this article

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

Present was the Earl of Inverness, arm-in-arm a young woman, while an associate beamed conspiratorially in the rear.

Absent that image, shot at a social event in 2001, few would have credited the allegations of a young woman who declared she was moved across the Atlantic and compelled to have perfunctory sexual encounters with a individual of the royal bloodline?

A curious, indicative move by someone who had publicly asserted to have no known about her, asserted he could not have had sex with her, and yet paid a substantial sum of family resources to resolve a drawn-out legal case.

Over a Decade of Controversy

Against this backdrop, conversations of the monarchy acting decisively to cut Andrew off are misguided. This scandal has continued for the majority of 15 years since that picture, and an additional image of Andrew walking congenially with a convicted sex offender came to light.

• Self-importance: How long did his family members, possibly even his parents, understand that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Questionable Associations: They must have known, if his employees and the law enforcement were fulfilling their roles, that he had some extremely unsavory companions given he openly invited them to estates.
• Monetary Excess: If the household did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with state resources.

Travel were printed in official documents: helicopter travel from the royal residence to a golf course and back again in time for lunch, exclusive air travel instead of commercial flights, all for the comfort of "the frequent flyer".

A Life of Privilege

Furthermore the arrogance which required subservience when he appeared in a space or the profound obsession about his royal titles used on his letterheads in messages to his friends.

He could get away with it while his matriarch, who inexplicably pampered him, was still alive. The Queen did at least revoke him of public duties and military positions in the wake of his ill-fated and, it is now clear, deceptive television interview six years ago.

Latest Events

Merely in the last fortnight that events progressed rapidly, following the publication of accounts giving more disturbing details of his behavior and that of his associates.

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

Society (and the media) were far ahead of the monarchy. There was nobody of any consequence to support him, a consequence of all those years of arrogance.

Monarchical Concerns

The wiser royals recognized that. The primary concern is to pass on the crown, if not as before at least whole and unblemished.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to overcome the reputation of earlier rulers, showing they are beneficial, accountable and reactive to their citizens.

His actions endangered all that in jeopardy in an age when respect and discretion is no longer sufficient.

The Fallout

Eventually, the famously uncertain sovereign was pushed more. There was no other option. The palace had relinquished authority of the story.

Now it is the removal of designations and the ongoing and life-long public humiliation that will afflict Andrew most deeply.

• Demotion: Reduced to just a commoner
• Historical Precedent: The first member to surrender his designations in contemporary era
• Military Service: Especially painful given his service in the Falklands war

He is still a counsellor of state, on paper able to stand in for the king, and he is still eighth in line to the throne, but not any of these will actually occur.

Future Prospects

Will people he comes across still show respect to him? Might they still slip up and call him Your Highness? Would they say Mr,

Naturally, he is not retiring to an ordinary town, but to the sovereign's large property at Sandringham.

There, he will be supplied by the king with one of the grace and favour houses and given some form of personal stipend.

This is not his previous residence, where he paid a nominal payment for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit remote, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Outstanding Concerns

This is not over. There are still documents in the hands of US Congress to be made public.

• Parliamentary Interest: Might parliament request additional information
• Monetary Probe: Or examine the improper use of public money
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a police investigation into his conduct

Perhaps for the present the harm to the monarchy to the institution is contained. The statement from the institution was plainly that the revocation of honorifics was what the monarch, and notably other senior family members, sought.

Altered Approach

The cessation of illusion that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, notably, the concise announcement showed evidently that the institution were supporting the victim's narrative of events.

Furthermore, for the initial instance they eventually showed regard for the survivors: "The measures are judged required, notwithstanding the truth that he maintains his innocence of the claims against him."

In the end it is arrogance, selfishness and indolence that will kill the monarchy. In his foolishness, self-gratification and venality, Andrew gives the impression never to have understood that truth.