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It all began with a solitary photograph, possibly the most significant ever taken of a individual from the royal household.

There stood the Duke of York, arm-in-arm a young woman, while an associate beamed conspiratorially in the backdrop.

Without that image, taken at a gathering in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the claims of a adolescent who declared she was moved across the sea and compelled to have brief intimate contact with a prince of the royal bloodline?

A strange, telling gesture by someone who had publicly claimed to have no been aware of her, said he could not have had sex with her, and yet paid millions of family resources to settle a protracted court action.

Over a Decade of Disgrace

In this context, conversations of the royal family acting decisively to distance themselves from Andrew are wide of the mark. This scandal has endured for the better part of 15 years since that image, and a further image of Andrew strolling amiably with a disgraced financier surfaced.

• Self-importance: For what duration did his siblings, possibly even his mother and father, realize that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have realized, if his aides and the law enforcement were doing their jobs, that he had some deeply disreputable friends given he publicly invited them to estates.
• Monetary Excess: If the household did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with public money.

Trips were listed in royal annual reports: helicopter transfers from the palace to a golf course and back again in time for lunch, chartered planes instead of commercial flights, all for the benefit of "Airmiles Andy".

World of Deference

Furthermore the arrogance which required subservience when he appeared in a area or the supreme consciousness about his royal titles used on his official documents in messages to his personal acquaintances.

He avoided accountability while his parent, who unaccountably spoiled him, was still surviving. The monarch did at least remove him of public duties and ceremonial ranks in the consequence of his ill-fated and, we now know, deceptive television interview six years ago.

Current Situation

Just in the last two weeks that events sped up, following the issuance of accounts giving more disturbing details of his behavior and that of his connections.

Additional revelations have again exposed Andrew's belief that he could avoid lying about his interaction with a disgraced individual.

Society (and the media) were far ahead of the royal family. There was no one of any significance to speak up for him, a result of all those years of presumption.

Institutional Fears

The more intelligent royals realized that. The key objective is to transfer the crown, if not as previously at least whole and unstained.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to overcome the legacy of previous monarchs, proving they are valuable, responsible and reactive to their subjects.

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

Consequences

Finally, the notoriously indecisive king was pushed further. There was no other option. The institution had surrendered command of the narrative.

Now it is the stripping of titles and the persistent and lifetime social disgrace that will pain Andrew most severely.

• Demotion: Lowered to just a commoner
• Prior Instance: The initial royal to lose his honorifics in contemporary era
• Armed Forces: Particularly hurtful given his duty in the Falklands war

He continues to be a constitutional officer, on paper able to stand in for the monarch, and he is still in the succession to the crown, but neither of these will ever come to pass.

Coming Developments

Can persons he encounters still defer to him? Could they still slip up and call him Sir? Will they even say Mr,

Certainly, he is not moving to a common area, but to the royal family's extensive estate at a monarchical property.

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

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

Outstanding Concerns

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

• Political Pressure: Will legislators seek further action
• Fiscal Review: Or scrutinize the waste of state resources
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a criminal probe into his behavior

Maybe for the moment the institutional damage to the institution is limited. The message from the institution was clearly that the stripping of designations was what the monarch, and notably other senior monarchical figures, desired.

A Shift in Position

An end to illusion that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, significantly, the concise statement showed evidently that the royals were aligning with the complainant's version of incidents.

Additionally, for the initial instance they eventually showed concern for the victims: "The measures are considered essential, notwithstanding the reality that he persists in refuting the allegations against him."

Ultimately it is arrogance, selfishness and inactivity that will kill the monarchy. In his folly, self-indulgence and greed, Andrew seems never to have learned that reality.