🔗 Share this article

This episode commenced with a solitary photograph, arguably the most impactful ever taken of a royal family member.

Present was the Baron Killyleagh, standing closely beside a teenage girl, while an associate grinned suggestively in the backdrop.

Without that snapshot, captured at a gathering in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the assertions of a young woman who stated she was trafficked across the Atlantic and compelled to have cursory sexual encounters with a member of the monarchy?

A strange, telling action by someone who had openly claimed to have never heard of her, claimed he could no have had relations with her, and yet paid millions of his mother's money to avert a long-delayed court action.

A Long Period of Controversy

In this context, conversations of the royals acting decisively to distance themselves from Andrew are inaccurate. This scandal has endured for the majority of 15 years since that picture, and an additional photo of Andrew ambling pleasantly with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Arrogance: To what extent did his siblings, perhaps even his mother and father, understand that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Problematic Connections: They must have known, if his employees and the police were doing their jobs, that he had some extremely unsavory friends given he unabashedly welcomed them to royal residences.
• Fiscal Irresponsibility: If the household did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his overspending with taxpayer funds.

Travel were listed in public records: helicopter flights from the palace to a sporting venue and back again in time for lunch, private flights instead of regular transport, all for the convenience of "Airmiles Andy".

World of Deference

Additionally the arrogance which demanded subservience when he entered a space or the supreme awareness about his designations used on his correspondence in communication to his associates.

He avoided accountability while his parent, who strangely spoiled him, was still surviving. The monarch did at least revoke him of royal responsibilities and honorary colonelcies in the aftermath of his disastrous and, we now know, deceptive television interview six years ago.

Latest Events

Merely in the last fortnight that events sped up, following the release of biographical works giving more disturbing information of his conduct and that of his connections.

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

The public (and the journalists) were far in advance of the royals. There was no one of any consequence to support him, a outcome of all those years of arrogance.

Institutional Fears

The more intelligent monarchical figures realized that. The key objective is to hand down the crown, if not as heretofore at least intact and unstained.

For generations the last 190 years trying to overcome the image of earlier rulers, demonstrating they are useful, accountable and reactive to their people.

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

Consequences

Finally, the notoriously hesitant monarch was prodded more. There was little choice. The institution had surrendered command of the narrative.

Presently the removal of honorifics and the continued and permanent social disgrace that will afflict Andrew the most.

• Reduction: Demoted to just a private citizen
• Prior Instance: The first monarch to forfeit his titles in recent history
• Naval Career: Especially stinging given his duty in the conflict

He remains a royal advisor, in principle able to stand in for the monarch, and he is still in the lineage to the throne, but not any of these will truly occur.

Future Prospects

Will people he encounters still show respect to him? Might they still make mistakes and call him Sir? Would they say Andrew,

Of course, he is not withdrawing to an ordinary town, but to the royal family's extensive property at Sandringham.

At that location, he will be supplied by the sovereign with one of the grace and favour houses and given some type of financial support.

This differs from his former home, where he paid a minimal rent for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit far, but even so it may not be far enough.

Unresolved Issues

The situation continues. There are still records in the possession of US Congress to be disclosed.

• Political Pressure: Will parliament demand more
• Monetary Probe: Or investigate the waste of taxpayer funds
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his behavior

Perhaps for the moment the reputational impact to the crown is limited. The message from the royal household was clearly that the stripping of titles was what the monarch, and notably other senior monarchical figures, sought.

A Shift in Position

The cessation of deception that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, notably, the concise announcement showed evidently that the monarchy were siding with the accuser's account of incidents.

Additionally, for the initial instance they ultimately showed consideration for the victims: "These actions are judged required, notwithstanding the reality that he continues to deny the claims against him."

Finally it is arrogance, self-interest and laziness that will destroy the monarchy. In his stupidity, self-gratification and corruption, Andrew gives the impression never to have understood that truth.