🔗 Share this article

It all began with a single photograph, arguably the most consequential ever taken of a individual from the royal household.

There stood the Baron Killyleagh, standing closely beside a female youth, while another individual grinned suggestively in the rear.

Lacking that snapshot, taken at a social event in 2001, who would have believed the allegations of a adolescent who stated she was moved across the ocean and obliged to have perfunctory sexual encounters with a prince of the royal bloodline?

A curious, revealing move by someone who had overtly claimed to have never heard of her, claimed he could not have had sex with her, and yet paid a large amount of monarchical resources to avert a long-delayed legal case.

A Long Period of Controversy

Considering this, conversations of the royals acting swiftly to cut Andrew off are wide of the mark. This controversy has continued for the largest portion of 15 years since that image, and a further photo of Andrew strolling amiably with a notorious individual came to light.

• Hubris: To what extent did his siblings, possibly even his relatives, understand that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have known, if his aides and the police were performing their duties, that he had some extremely unsavory companions given he publicly hosted them to palaces.
• Financial Extravagance: If the family did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his extravagance with taxpayer funds.

Trips were documented in royal annual reports: chopper flights from the estate to a golf course and back again in time for midday meal, exclusive air travel instead of scheduled services, all for the comfort of "the travel enthusiast".

World of Deference

Additionally the presumption which demanded deference when he appeared in a space or the extreme consciousness about his royal titles used on his correspondence in letters to his personal acquaintances.

He managed to escape consequences while his matriarch, who strangely pampered him, was still living. The Queen did at least remove him of public duties and military positions in the aftermath of his disastrous and, we now know, mendacious television interview six years ago.

Latest Events

Merely in the last two weeks that events sped up, following the publication of accounts giving more disturbing details of his conduct and that of his associates.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's thinking that he could escape lying about his relationship with a notorious figure.

The public (and the press) were far in advance of the monarchy. There was not a single person of any consequence to support him, a result of all those years of arrogance.

Royal Worries

The wiser monarchical figures recognized that. The primary concern is to pass on the monarchy, if not as heretofore at least whole and unstained.

Over time the last 190 years trying to undo the reputation of earlier rulers, showing they are beneficial, dutiful and attentive to their subjects.

Andrew was putting all that in danger in an era when deference and secrecy is no longer enough.

The Fallout

Ultimately, the famously uncertain king was prodded further. There was little choice. The palace had surrendered command of the narrative.

Currently the removal of designations and the continued and lifetime personal shame that will afflict Andrew the most.

• Downgrading: Demoted to just a commoner
• Past Example: The primary royal to lose his honorifics in contemporary era
• Armed Forces: Especially painful given his role in the engagement

He remains a royal advisor, on paper able to substitute for the sovereign, and he is still in the succession to the monarchy, but not any of these will actually happen.

Coming Developments

Can persons he comes across still show respect to him? Will they still slip up and call him Prince? Would they say Mr,

Naturally, he is not withdrawing to suburbia, but to the monarchy's extensive grounds at a royal residence.

In that place, he will be supplied by the monarch with one of the estate properties and given some form of financial support.

This is not his former home, where he paid a token rent for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit far, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Pending Matters

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

• Governmental Scrutiny: Might parliament seek further action
• Fiscal Review: Or investigate the misuse of taxpayer funds
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a criminal probe into his actions

Possibly for the time being the harm to the monarchy to the crown is restricted. The statement from the palace was clearly that the removal of designations was what the sovereign, and notably other senior monarchical figures, wanted.

Changed Stance

The cessation of illusion that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, notably, the short statement showed evidently that the monarchy were aligning with the accuser's version of events.

Furthermore, for the first time they eventually showed concern for the victims: "These actions are considered essential, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the accusations against him."

Ultimately it is arrogance, selfishness and laziness that will kill the institution. In his folly, self-gratification and greed, Andrew appears never to have understood that lesson.