🔗 Share this article

This episode commenced with a solitary photograph, perhaps the most significant ever taken of a member of the monarchy.

There stood the Earl of Inverness, arm-in-arm a teenage girl, while another individual grinned conspiratorially in the background.

Without that photograph, captured at a party in 2001, few would have credited the allegations of a young woman who said she was moved across the Atlantic and compelled to have cursory sexual encounters with a individual of the monarchy?

An odd, revealing gesture by someone who had openly stated to have not been aware of her, said he could not have had relations with her, and yet handed over millions of his mother's money to avert a protracted legal case.

Years of Disgrace

In this context, talk of the royals acting decisively to cut Andrew off are wide of the mark. This affair has continued for the largest portion of 15 years since that photograph, and another snapshot of Andrew walking pleasantly with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Self-importance: How long did his brothers and sisters, maybe even his relatives, understand that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have realized, if his aides and the police were doing their jobs, that he had some extremely unsavory associates given he publicly hosted them to estates.
• Monetary Excess: If the household did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with taxpayer funds.

Travel were documented in public records: chopper travel from the palace to a sporting venue and back again in time for lunch, chartered planes instead of commercial flights, all for the comfort of "the frequent flyer".

A Life of Privilege

Then there was the arrogance which expected respect when he entered a space or the extreme obsession about his designations used on his letterheads in letters to his friends.

He could get away with it while his parent, who strangely indulged him, was still surviving. The Queen did at least revoke him of royal responsibilities and honorary colonelcies in the consequence of his ill-fated and, it is now clear, deceptive television interview six years ago.

Current Situation

Merely in the last 14 days that events accelerated, following the issuance of accounts giving more disturbing particulars of his conduct and that of his connections.

Additional revelations have again exposed Andrew's assumption that he could get away with being untruthful about his interaction with a notorious figure.

People (and the journalists) were far ahead of the royals. There was no one of any consequence to support him, a result of all those years of arrogance.

Institutional Fears

The more intelligent royals realized that. The key objective is to transfer the monarchy, if not as before at least complete and unblemished.

For generations the last 190 years trying to reverse the legacy of past sovereigns, demonstrating they are useful, responsible and responsive to their people.

Andrew was putting all that in peril in an age when respect and discretion is no longer enough.

Consequences

Eventually, the notoriously uncertain king was pushed more. There was little choice. The royal household had lost control of the account.

Presently the loss of designations and the persistent and lifetime personal shame that will pain Andrew the most.

• Downgrading: Demoted to just a private citizen
• Prior Instance: The primary royal to surrender his honorifics in contemporary era
• Armed Forces: Particularly hurtful given his duty in the engagement

He is still a royal advisor, on paper able to stand in for the king, and he is still in the succession to the monarchy, but neither of these will ever happen.

Future Prospects

Do individuals he meets still show respect to him? Will they still forget themselves and call him Prince? Might they say Andrew,

Of course, he is not retiring to a common area, but to the monarchy's vast grounds at a royal residence.

At that location, he will be supplied by the king with one of the grace and favour houses and given some type of private allowance.

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

Unresolved Issues

This is not over. There are still records in the hands of American legislators to be revealed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Could parliament seek further action
• Fiscal Review: Or scrutinize the improper use of state resources
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a criminal probe into his behavior

Perhaps for the present the harm to the monarchy to the crown is restricted. The message from the royal household was evidently that the removal of honorifics was what the king, and particularly other senior monarchical figures, wanted.

Changed Stance

No more deception that Andrew was acting willingly. And, remarkably, the concise communication showed evidently that the monarchy were supporting the accuser's account of incidents.

Additionally, for the premiere occasion they ultimately showed concern for the survivors: "The measures are deemed necessary, despite the truth that he persists in refuting the claims against him."

In the end it is presumption, selfishness and laziness that will kill the monarchy. In his stupidity, self-indulgence and greed, Andrew seems never to have learned that lesson.