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

Present was the Earl of Inverness, standing closely beside a young woman, while a companion smiled suggestively in the backdrop.

Lacking that snapshot, captured at a party in 2001, who would have believed the assertions of a teenager who said she was moved across the Atlantic and obliged to have brief intimate contact with a prince of the royal family?

A strange, revealing move by someone who had openly claimed to have never known about her, claimed he could not have had intimate contact with her, and yet paid a substantial sum of monarchical funds to resolve a drawn-out lawsuit.

A Long Period of Controversy

In this context, conversations of the royals acting decisively to distance themselves from Andrew are wide of the mark. This controversy has continued for the better part of 15 years since that photograph, and an additional snapshot of Andrew ambling amiably with a notorious individual came to light.

• Self-importance: To what extent did his brothers and sisters, maybe even his relatives, know that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Questionable Associations: They must have realized, if his aides and the authorities were fulfilling their roles, that he had some highly questionable companions given he unabashedly invited them to estates.
• Financial Extravagance: If the family did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his overspending with public money.

Trips were listed in public records: private aircraft flights from the royal residence to a country club and back again in time for lunch, exclusive air travel instead of scheduled services, all for the comfort of "the frequent flyer".

World of Deference

Then there was the presumption which required deference when he walked into a room or the profound obsession about his royal titles used on his official documents in communication to his associates.

He avoided accountability while his parent, who inexplicably spoiled him, was still alive. The sovereign did at least revoke him of public duties and honorary colonelcies in the consequence of his catastrophic and, we now know, untruthful television interview six years ago.

Current Situation

Merely in the last two weeks that events progressed rapidly, following the publication of books giving more troubling details of his conduct and that of his associates.

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

The public (and the media) were far ahead of the royal family. There was nobody of any significance to speak up for him, a result of all those years of hubris.

Institutional Fears

The wiser royals realized that. The primary concern is to pass on the monarchy, if not as previously at least complete and unstained.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to overcome the reputation of previous monarchs, proving they are valuable, dutiful and reactive to their subjects.

He was placing all that in peril in an time when deference and privacy is no longer adequate.

Consequences

Ultimately, the well-known hesitant king was prodded more. There was no other option. The royal household had lost control of the story.

Presently the loss of titles and the persistent and permanent social disgrace that will hurt Andrew most severely.

• Reduction: Reduced to just a private citizen
• Prior Instance: The first member to forfeit his honorifics in contemporary era
• Armed Forces: Particularly hurtful given his duty in the conflict

He remains a constitutional officer, on paper able to substitute for the monarch, and he is still in the succession to the monarchy, but none of these will truly occur.

Coming Developments

Can persons he encounters still acknowledge him? Will they still slip up and call him Your Highness? Might they say Mr,

Certainly, he is not withdrawing to suburbia, but to the sovereign's large property at a monarchical property.

There, he will be furnished by the sovereign with one of the royal residences and given some type of private allowance.

This is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a token lease for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit remote, but even so it may not be far enough.

Pending Matters

Matters remain unresolved. There are still files in the possession of overseas authorities to be disclosed.

• Political Pressure: Will parliament request additional information
• Fiscal Review: Or examine the improper use of public money
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a criminal probe into his behavior

Maybe for the moment the institutional damage to the monarchy is contained. The statement from the royal household was clearly that the removal of designations was what the monarch, and especially other senior monarchical figures, wanted.

A Shift in Position

The cessation of illusion that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, remarkably, the brief statement showed clearly that the institution were supporting the victim's account of incidents.

Additionally, for the initial instance they finally showed regard for the survivors: "The censures are judged required, regardless of the reality that he persists in refuting the allegations against him."

In the end it is entitlement, self-seeking and inactivity that will undermine the monarchy. In his stupidity, self-indulgence and corruption, Andrew gives the impression never to have grasped that truth.