🔗 Share this article

It all began with a solitary photograph, perhaps the most impactful ever taken of a royal family member.

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

Lacking that snapshot, shot at a gathering in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the claims of a teenager who declared she was trafficked across the sea and obliged to have brief relations with a individual of the royal bloodline?

A curious, indicative action by someone who had publicly claimed to have not known about her, claimed he could never have had sex with her, and yet handed over millions of family funds to settle a long-delayed legal case.

A Long Period of Disgrace

In this context, discussions of the royal family acting swiftly to sever ties with Andrew are inaccurate. This affair has continued for the majority of 15 years since that picture, and a further photo of Andrew strolling amiably with a disgraced financier surfaced.

• Self-importance: To what extent did his siblings, maybe even his parents, realize that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Questionable Associations: They must have understood, if his aides and the authorities were doing their jobs, that he had some deeply disreputable associates given he publicly invited them to estates.
• Financial Extravagance: If the household did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his extravagance with taxpayer funds.

Travel were listed in royal annual reports: private aircraft transfers from the palace to a country club and back again in time for lunch, private flights instead of regular transport, all for the convenience of "the frequent flyer".

World of Deference

Additionally the entitlement which expected respect when he appeared in a area or the profound obsession about his royal titles used on his official documents in messages to his personal acquaintances.

He managed to escape consequences while his matriarch, who inexplicably pampered him, was still alive. The Queen did at least revoke him of royal responsibilities and military positions in the wake of his disastrous and, we now know, mendacious public statement six years ago.

Current Situation

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

Additional revelations have again revealed Andrew's belief that he could escape being untruthful about his contact with a notorious figure.

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

Royal Worries

The more intelligent royals recognized that. The key objective is to transfer the institution, if not as heretofore at least whole and untarnished.

For generations the last 190 years trying to overcome the legacy of previous monarchs, showing they are valuable, dutiful and attentive to their subjects.

His actions endangered all that in jeopardy in an era when deference and discretion is no longer adequate.

Consequences

Eventually, the famously indecisive monarch was pressured further. There was no alternative. The palace had relinquished authority of the story.

Presently the stripping of honorifics and the ongoing and lifetime personal shame that will afflict Andrew most severely.

• Downgrading: Lowered to just a private citizen
• Prior Instance: The initial royal to lose his titles in contemporary era
• Armed Forces: Especially painful given his duty in the engagement

He is still a royal advisor, theoretically able to act for the monarch, and he is still eighth in line to the monarchy, but none of these will actually happen.

Coming Developments

Do individuals he encounters still show respect to him? Could they still make mistakes and call him Prince? Would they say Sir,

Naturally, he is not moving to suburbia, but to the royal family's large property at Sandringham.

In that place, he will be furnished by the king with one of the royal residences and given some type of private allowance.

It is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a nominal lease for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit far, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Unresolved Issues

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

• Parliamentary Interest: Might parliament demand more
• Financial Investigation: Or scrutinize the waste of taxpayer funds
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a police investigation into his conduct

Perhaps for the time being the institutional damage to the institution is limited. The message from the royal household was clearly that the stripping of honorifics was what the monarch, and particularly other senior monarchical figures, sought.

Altered Approach

No more pretence that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, significantly, the brief statement showed plainly that the royals were aligning with the complainant's account of events.

Furthermore, for the premiere occasion they finally showed concern for the victims: "The censures are deemed necessary, despite the reality that he continues to deny the accusations against him."

In the end it is entitlement, self-interest and inactivity that will undermine the monarchy. In his stupidity, self-indulgence and venality, Andrew seems never to have grasped that lesson.