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The saga started with a single photograph, arguably the most consequential ever captured of a individual from the royal household.

There stood the Earl of Inverness, with his arm around a teenage girl, while a companion beamed knowingly in the rear.

Lacking that image, captured at a gathering in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the claims of a adolescent who stated she was trafficked across the Atlantic and obliged to have perfunctory sexual encounters with a member of the royal family?

An odd, revealing gesture by someone who had publicly stated to have no heard of her, asserted he could not have had sex with her, and yet provided a large amount of monarchical funds to avert a protracted lawsuit.

Years of Controversy

Considering this, conversations of the royals acting swiftly to cut Andrew off are inaccurate. This scandal has persisted for the majority of 15 years since that image, and another image of Andrew strolling pleasantly with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Arrogance: For what duration did his family members, maybe even his parents, know that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have known, if his employees and the police were doing their jobs, that he had some highly questionable companions given he unabashedly invited them to palaces.
• Monetary Excess: If the monarchy did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his extravagance with public money.

Trips were printed in public records: private aircraft transfers from the palace to a sporting venue and back again in time for dining, chartered planes instead of regular transport, all for the convenience of "Airmiles Andy".

A Life of Privilege

Additionally the arrogance which required respect when he entered a area or the supreme obsession about his designations used on his letterheads in communication to his associates.

He managed to escape consequences while his parent, who inexplicably indulged him, was still living. The monarch did at least remove him of royal responsibilities and honorary colonelcies in the consequence of his ill-fated and, as revealed, deceptive television interview six years ago.

Current Situation

It was only in the last fortnight that events accelerated, following the issuance of biographical works giving more disturbing details of his conduct and that of his companions.

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

The public (and the journalists) were far more perceptive of the monarchy. There was nobody of any significance to defend him, a consequence of all those years of presumption.

Institutional Fears

The wiser family members recognized that. The key objective is to pass on the crown, if not as before at least intact and unblemished.

For generations the last 190 years trying to reverse the image of previous monarchs, showing they are valuable, accountable and responsive to their subjects.

He was placing all that in peril in an age when respect and privacy is no longer sufficient.

Aftermath

Ultimately, the famously hesitant monarch was prodded additional. There was no alternative. The institution had lost control of the story.

Presently the loss of honorifics and the continued and lifetime public humiliation that will afflict Andrew most severely.

• Downgrading: Reduced to just a commoner
• Past Example: The initial member to surrender his titles in modern times
• Naval Career: Especially stinging given his role in the engagement

He is still a counsellor of state, on paper able to act for the monarch, and he is still in the succession to the throne, but none of these will actually occur.

Future Prospects

Will people he meets still show respect to him? Might they still forget themselves and call him Prince? Might they say Sir,

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

In that place, he will be supplied by the sovereign with one of the estate properties and given some sort of private allowance.

This is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a token rent for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit distant, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Unresolved Issues

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

• Political Pressure: Could lawmakers seek further action
• Monetary Probe: Or investigate the waste of state resources
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a police investigation into his behavior

Possibly for the present the harm to the monarchy to the institution is restricted. The statement from the royal household was plainly that the stripping of designations was what the monarch, and especially other senior royals, wanted.

A Shift in Position

No more illusion that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, notably, the concise communication showed evidently that the institution were siding with the victim's version of events.

Additionally, for the initial instance they eventually showed consideration for the affected individuals: "The censures are considered essential, despite the truth that he persists in refuting the accusations against him."

Finally it is arrogance, self-seeking and indolence that will destroy the institution. In his folly, self-gratification and greed, Andrew gives the impression never to have understood that lesson.