🔗 Share this article

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

Present was the Duke of York, with his arm around a female youth, while a companion smiled suggestively in the background.

Without that snapshot, captured at a party in 2001, who would have believed the allegations of a young woman who said she was moved across the Atlantic and obliged to have perfunctory relations with a prince of the royal family?

A curious, telling action by someone who had overtly stated to have never been aware of her, claimed he could never have had relations with her, and yet handed over a substantial sum of monarchical funds to settle a protracted lawsuit.

A Long Period of Scandal

Considering this, conversations of the royal family acting swiftly to distance themselves from Andrew are wide of the mark. This affair has persisted for the better part of 15 years since that image, and a further image of Andrew strolling amiably with a disgraced financier emerged.

• Self-importance: For what duration did his brothers and sisters, maybe even his parents, know that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Questionable Associations: They must have known, if his aides and the law enforcement were performing their duties, that he had some highly questionable companions given he unabashedly hosted them to royal residences.
• Financial Extravagance: If the family did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his extravagance with taxpayer funds.

Travel were documented in official documents: helicopter transfers from the royal residence to a country club and back again in time for midday meal, exclusive air travel instead of commercial flights, all for the convenience of "the frequent flyer".

World of Deference

Then there was the entitlement which expected subservience when he appeared in a space or the supreme obsession about his designations used on his official documents in letters to his friends.

He could get away with it while his matriarch, who strangely pampered him, was still alive. The sovereign did at least remove him of official roles and military positions in the wake of his ill-fated and, as revealed, mendacious public statement six years ago.

Current Situation

Just in the last 14 days that events progressed rapidly, following the issuance of books giving more disturbing details of his actions and that of his connections.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's belief that he could get away with deceiving about his relationship with a notorious figure.

The public (and the media) were far in advance of the royals. There was nobody of any consequence to defend him, a outcome of all those years of hubris.

Monarchical Concerns

The more intelligent family members realized that. The one imperative is to hand down the institution, if not as before at least whole and unblemished.

Over time the last 190 years trying to undo the legacy of earlier rulers, showing they are valuable, responsible and reactive to their citizens.

Andrew was putting all that in jeopardy in an time when respect and privacy is no longer enough.

The Fallout

Ultimately, the notoriously indecisive king was pressured further. There was no alternative. The royal household had lost control of the account.

Currently the removal of honorifics and the persistent and lifetime social disgrace that will afflict Andrew the most.

• Demotion: Demoted to just a commoner
• Prior Instance: The first royal to forfeit his titles in modern times
• Military Service: Notably stinging given his role in the Falklands war

He remains a counsellor of state, theoretically able to substitute for the king, and he is still in the lineage to the throne, but none of these will ever come to pass.

Future Prospects

Do individuals he meets still defer to him? Will they still make mistakes and call him Sir? Will they even say Mr,

Naturally, he is not retiring to suburbia, but to the monarchy's vast grounds at Sandringham.

There, he will be furnished by the king with one of the grace and favour houses and given some form of private allowance.

It is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a token payment for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit distant, but even so it may not be far enough.

Outstanding Concerns

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

• Governmental Scrutiny: Might lawmakers request additional information
• Monetary Probe: Or examine the waste of taxpayer funds
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a criminal probe into his actions

Possibly for the present the reputational impact to the institution is restricted. The message from the royal household was plainly that the stripping of honorifics was what the sovereign, and notably other senior monarchical figures, sought.

A Shift in Position

The cessation of illusion that Andrew was acting willingly. And, remarkably, the short statement showed clearly that the institution were siding with the accuser's version of occurrences.

Furthermore, for the initial instance they eventually showed concern for the survivors: "The censures are judged required, despite the reality that he persists in refuting the claims against him."

Finally it is arrogance, self-interest and laziness that will undermine the institution. In his stupidity, self-indulgence and greed, Andrew appears never to have grasped that lesson.