🔗 Share this article

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

Present was the Baron Killyleagh, arm-in-arm a female youth, while an associate grinned conspiratorially in the backdrop.

Absent that image, taken at a social event in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the assertions of a young woman who said she was transported across the ocean and compelled to have brief relations with a individual of the royal family?

An odd, revealing move by someone who had openly asserted to have no known about her, claimed he could no have had intimate contact with her, and yet provided a substantial sum of family money to settle a drawn-out court action.

Years of Scandal

Against this backdrop, talk of the monarchy acting swiftly to sever ties with Andrew are wide of the mark. This scandal has continued for the largest portion of 15 years since that image, and another snapshot of Andrew strolling amiably with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Hubris: For what duration did his brothers and sisters, possibly even his mother and father, know that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Questionable Associations: They must have known, if his employees and the authorities were doing their jobs, that he had some deeply disreputable companions given he publicly invited them to royal residences.
• Financial Extravagance: If the monarchy did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with taxpayer funds.

Journeys were printed in official documents: private aircraft transfers from the royal residence to a golf course and back again in time for midday meal, private flights instead of regular transport, all for the benefit of "the travel enthusiast".

Existence of Entitlement

Furthermore the presumption which demanded subservience when he walked into a area or the extreme awareness about his honorifics used on his letterheads in communication to his personal acquaintances.

He avoided accountability while his parent, who strangely indulged him, was still alive. The monarch did at least strip him of official roles and honorary colonelcies in the wake of his ill-fated and, we now know, untruthful media appearance six years ago.

Current Situation

Merely in the last two weeks that events sped up, following the issuance of books giving more troubling details of his conduct and that of his associates.

Additional revelations have again revealed Andrew's thinking that he could get away with being untruthful about his relationship with a notorious figure.

People (and the journalists) were far more perceptive of the royal family. There was not a single person of any significance to defend him, a consequence of all those years of arrogance.

Institutional Fears

The more astute royals recognized that. The primary concern is to pass on the monarchy, if not as heretofore at least intact and unstained.

For generations the last 190 years trying to overcome the legacy of previous monarchs, proving they are useful, dutiful and reactive to their citizens.

He was placing all that in jeopardy in an age when respect and secrecy is no longer adequate.

Consequences

Finally, the well-known uncertain monarch was pressured further. There was no alternative. The royal household had relinquished authority of the narrative.

Currently the removal of titles and the continued and lifetime social disgrace that will pain Andrew the most.

• Demotion: Demoted to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Historical Precedent: The first monarch to surrender his honorifics in modern times
• Military Service: Notably hurtful given his role in the Falklands war

He continues to be a constitutional officer, on paper able to stand in for the monarch, and he is still in the succession to the throne, but neither of these will ever come to pass.

Coming Developments

Do individuals he meets still defer to him? Could they still slip up and call him Prince? Would they say Andrew,

Of course, he is not moving to suburbia, but to the sovereign's large property at a monarchical property.

At that location, he will be furnished by the king with one of the estate properties and given some sort of personal stipend.

It is not his former home, where he paid a token payment for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit far, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Outstanding Concerns

The situation continues. There are still files in the custody of overseas authorities to be disclosed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Could parliament seek further action
• Financial Investigation: Or examine the improper use of taxpayer funds
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a police investigation into his behavior

Perhaps for the moment the harm to the monarchy to the monarchy is limited. The statement from the institution was evidently that the stripping of honorifics was what the king, and notably other senior monarchical figures, desired.

Altered Approach

The cessation of pretence that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, significantly, the concise statement showed plainly that the monarchy were supporting the accuser's account of incidents.

Additionally, for the premiere occasion they finally showed regard for the victims: "The measures are judged required, despite the truth that he continues to deny the claims against him."

Finally it is entitlement, self-seeking and indolence that will undermine the monarchy. In his foolishness, self-gratification and greed, Andrew seems never to have grasped that truth.