🔗 Share this article

The saga started with a isolated photograph, perhaps the most impactful ever captured of a member of the monarchy.

In the frame appeared the Duke of York, with his arm around a female youth, while another individual beamed knowingly in the rear.

Absent that snapshot, captured at a party in 2001, few would have credited the allegations of a teenager who said she was transported across the ocean and forced to have brief sexual encounters with a member of the royal bloodline?

An odd, telling gesture by someone who had overtly asserted to have no been aware of her, asserted he could no have had intimate contact with her, and yet handed over a substantial sum of his mother's money to resolve a long-delayed court action.

A Long Period of Controversy

In this context, conversations of the royals acting firmly to sever ties with Andrew are misguided. This affair has continued for the better part of 15 years since that picture, and another snapshot of Andrew strolling congenially with a disgraced financier emerged.

• Arrogance: To what extent did his siblings, possibly even his relatives, know that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have understood, if his employees and the police were doing their jobs, that he had some highly questionable friends given he unabashedly hosted them to royal residences.
• Monetary Excess: If the household did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with taxpayer funds.

Journeys were listed in royal annual reports: helicopter travel from the royal residence to a sporting venue and back again in time for midday meal, exclusive air travel instead of scheduled services, all for the benefit of "Airmiles Andy".

World of Deference

Furthermore the presumption which expected deference when he walked into a space or the extreme consciousness about his designations used on his correspondence in letters to his associates.

He avoided accountability while his matriarch, who inexplicably spoiled him, was still surviving. The monarch did at least remove him of public duties and honorary colonelcies in the wake of his catastrophic and, as revealed, untruthful public statement six years ago.

Recent Developments

Merely in the last fortnight that events accelerated, following the issuance of biographical works giving more grim information of his conduct and that of his connections.

Additional revelations have again exposed Andrew's belief that he could escape lying about his interaction with a convicted criminal.

The public (and the journalists) were far ahead of the royal family. There was not a single person of any significance to speak up for him, a outcome of all those years of hubris.

Monarchical Concerns

The more astute royals recognized that. The primary concern is to hand down the institution, if not as before at least complete and unstained.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to undo the reputation of earlier rulers, showing they are valuable, dutiful and attentive to their citizens.

His actions endangered all that in jeopardy in an age when submission and discretion is no longer enough.

Aftermath

Eventually, the notoriously indecisive king was prodded additional. There was little choice. The palace had lost control of the narrative.

Currently the removal of titles and the ongoing and life-long social disgrace that will pain Andrew most severely.

• Downgrading: Lowered to just a private citizen
• Prior Instance: The initial monarch to surrender his titles in modern times
• Armed Forces: Notably hurtful given his service in the engagement

He continues to be a counsellor of state, in principle able to substitute for the monarch, and he is still in the lineage to the crown, but neither of these will actually occur.

Future Prospects

Will people he meets still defer to him? Will they still slip up and call him Prince? Would they say Andrew,

Of course, he is not withdrawing to suburbia, but to the monarchy's vast grounds at a royal residence.

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

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

Outstanding Concerns

Matters remain unresolved. There are still documents in the custody of American legislators to be disclosed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Could parliament request additional information
• Fiscal Review: Or examine the improper use of state resources
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his behavior

Maybe for the moment the institutional damage to the crown is limited. The statement from the palace was clearly that the stripping of honorifics was what the sovereign, and especially other senior royals, sought.

A Shift in Position

The cessation of deception that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, notably, the short statement showed evidently that the monarchy were aligning with the accuser's account of occurrences.

Even more, for the first time they ultimately showed concern for the victims: "The measures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he maintains his innocence of the claims against him."

In the end it is entitlement, self-seeking and laziness that will undermine the institution. In his stupidity, self-indulgence and greed, Andrew appears never to have grasped that truth.