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The saga started with a solitary photograph, perhaps the most significant ever captured of a individual from the royal household.

Present was the Earl of Inverness, standing closely beside a female youth, while an associate grinned knowingly in the backdrop.

Lacking that image, taken at a gathering in 2001, who would have believed the assertions of a adolescent who said she was transported across the ocean and obliged to have perfunctory intimate contact with a member of the monarchy?

A strange, indicative action by someone who had overtly stated to have no heard of her, claimed he could never have had intimate contact with her, and yet handed over a substantial sum of family money to resolve a drawn-out court action.

Over a Decade of Scandal

In this context, discussions of the royals acting swiftly to distance themselves from Andrew are misguided. This scandal has persisted for the largest portion of 15 years since that photograph, and a further image of Andrew walking pleasantly with a disgraced financier emerged.

• Self-importance: To what extent did his brothers and sisters, perhaps even his parents, realize that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Problematic Connections: 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 royal residences.
• Monetary Excess: If the family did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his extravagance with public money.

Travel were printed in official documents: private aircraft flights from the royal residence to a golf course and back again in time for dining, chartered planes instead of regular transport, all for the convenience of "the travel enthusiast".

World of Deference

Then there was the presumption which required deference when he entered a room or the extreme consciousness about his honorifics used on his correspondence in letters to his associates.

He avoided accountability while his mother, who unaccountably indulged him, was still living. The Queen did at least remove him of public duties and honorary colonelcies in the wake of his ill-fated and, we now know, deceptive television interview six years ago.

Latest Events

Just in the last fortnight that events sped up, following the publication of books giving more grim particulars of his actions and that of his connections.

Further disclosures have again revealed Andrew's assumption that he could get away with deceiving about his relationship with a disgraced individual.

Society (and the journalists) were far in advance of the monarchy. There was not a single person of any consequence to defend him, a result of all those years of presumption.

Royal Worries

The more astute family members realized that. The primary concern is to pass on the institution, if not as heretofore at least intact and unblemished.

Over time the last 190 years trying to overcome the image of previous monarchs, demonstrating they are valuable, accountable and attentive to their subjects.

His actions endangered all that in danger in an age when respect and privacy is no longer enough.

Consequences

Finally, the well-known uncertain sovereign was pressured additional. There was no alternative. The royal household had lost control of the story.

Currently the stripping of titles and the persistent and permanent personal shame that will hurt Andrew most severely.

• Demotion: Lowered to just a commoner
• Prior Instance: The primary monarch to surrender his designations in modern times
• Naval Career: Especially painful given his role in the Falklands war

He remains a constitutional officer, on paper able to stand in for the monarch, and he is still in the lineage to the crown, but none of these will truly happen.

Coming Developments

Will people he meets still show respect to him? Might they still make mistakes and call him Prince? Will they even say Andrew,

Certainly, he is not withdrawing to an ordinary town, but to the sovereign's large estate at a royal residence.

In that place, he will be provided by the king with one of the grace and favour houses and given some form of personal stipend.

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

Unresolved Issues

Matters remain unresolved. There are still documents in the custody of overseas authorities to be made public.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Will lawmakers request additional information
• Monetary Probe: Or scrutinize the improper use of state resources
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a criminal probe into his actions

Perhaps for the time being the institutional damage to the crown is limited. The statement from the palace was clearly that the stripping of designations was what the sovereign, and notably other senior monarchical figures, wanted.

Changed Stance

An end to illusion that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, significantly, the brief communication showed evidently that the monarchy were siding with the accuser's narrative of incidents.

Furthermore, for the first time they eventually showed concern for the affected individuals: "The censures are considered essential, despite the truth that he continues to deny the allegations against him."

In the end it is arrogance, self-interest and laziness that will destroy the crown. In his foolishness, self-indulgence and greed, Andrew appears never to have understood that truth.