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

Present was the Baron Killyleagh, arm-in-arm a young woman, while another individual grinned knowingly in the rear.

Lacking that snapshot, shot at a gathering in 2001, who would have believed the assertions of a teenager who declared she was trafficked across the ocean and obliged to have brief intimate contact with a prince of the royal bloodline?

A strange, revealing action by someone who had openly claimed to have not heard of her, said he could never have had sex with her, and yet provided millions of family resources to settle a protracted legal case.

A Long Period of Scandal

Considering this, discussions of the royal family acting firmly to cut Andrew off are inaccurate. This affair has endured for the majority of 15 years since that image, and an additional image of Andrew ambling pleasantly with a notorious individual emerged.

• Self-importance: To what extent did his family members, possibly even his parents, know that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Problematic Connections: They must have realized, if his employees and the authorities were fulfilling their roles, that he had some extremely unsavory associates given he publicly hosted them to estates.
• Monetary Excess: If the household did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with public money.

Trips were printed in royal annual reports: chopper flights from the palace to a country club and back again in time for midday meal, private flights instead of commercial flights, all for the comfort of "the travel enthusiast".

A Life of Privilege

Then there was the entitlement which demanded subservience when he walked into a area or the profound obsession about his designations used on his correspondence in communication to his friends.

He avoided accountability while his mother, who unaccountably spoiled him, was still living. The sovereign did at least revoke him of royal responsibilities and honorary colonelcies in the consequence of his ill-fated and, as revealed, mendacious media appearance six years ago.

Recent Developments

Merely in the last two weeks that events sped up, following the release of accounts giving more grim information of his conduct and that of his associates.

Further disclosures have again exposed Andrew's assumption that he could avoid being untruthful about his relationship with a notorious figure.

People (and the media) were far ahead of the royals. There was no one of any significance to speak up for him, a result of all those years of hubris.

Monarchical Concerns

The more intelligent royals realized 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 legacy of previous monarchs, demonstrating they are valuable, dutiful and reactive to their people.

He was placing all that in peril in an age when deference and discretion is no longer enough.

Consequences

Eventually, the famously uncertain king was pressured additional. There was no alternative. The royal household had surrendered command of the narrative.

Currently the stripping of honorifics and the ongoing and life-long public humiliation that will afflict Andrew most severely.

• Demotion: Lowered to just a commoner
• Past Example: The first member to lose his honorifics in modern times
• Military Service: Especially stinging given his service in the engagement

He is still a counsellor of state, theoretically able to act for the king, and he is still in the succession to the throne, but neither of these will actually occur.

What Lies Ahead

Can persons he meets still defer to him? Could they still slip up and call him Your Highness? Will they even say Sir,

Of course, he is not moving to suburbia, but to the monarchy's extensive grounds at Sandringham.

There, he will be furnished by the king with one of the grace and favour houses and given some sort of private allowance.

This differs from his prior accommodation, where he paid a minimal payment for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit distant, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Pending Matters

This is not over. There are still documents in the hands of American legislators to be disclosed.

• Political Pressure: Will lawmakers seek further action
• Fiscal Review: Or examine the misuse of state resources
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a criminal probe into his actions

Possibly for the present the harm to the monarchy to the monarchy is limited. The narrative from the palace was clearly that the stripping of designations was what the monarch, and notably other senior royals, wanted.

Changed Stance

An end to deception that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, notably, the brief announcement showed clearly that the institution were siding with the complainant's version of events.

Even more, for the initial instance they eventually showed regard for the survivors: "These actions are judged required, despite the truth that he persists in refuting the accusations against him."

In the end it is arrogance, selfishness and indolence that will kill the crown. In his folly, self-indulgence and corruption, Andrew seems never to have grasped that lesson.