🔗 Share this article

The saga started with a solitary photograph, possibly the most impactful ever captured of a royal family member.

There stood the Duke of York, with his arm around a teenage girl, while a companion beamed suggestively in the background.

Without that photograph, captured at a social event in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the allegations of a teenager who said she was transported across the ocean and obliged to have cursory intimate contact with a member of the royal family?

An odd, revealing move by someone who had publicly asserted to have never known about her, asserted he could never have had intimate contact with her, and yet provided millions of family funds to resolve a drawn-out court action.

A Long Period of Controversy

In this context, talk of the royal family acting swiftly to cut Andrew off are inaccurate. This scandal has endured for the largest portion of 15 years since that image, and an additional image of Andrew ambling pleasantly with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Self-importance: To what extent did his family members, perhaps even his relatives, understand that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have understood, if his employees and the law enforcement were performing their duties, that he had some extremely unsavory associates given he publicly welcomed them to estates.
• Monetary Excess: If the monarchy did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his extravagance with taxpayer funds.

Trips were listed in public records: helicopter travel from the palace to a country club and back again in time for dining, exclusive air travel instead of scheduled services, all for the comfort of "the travel enthusiast".

Existence of Entitlement

Then there was the entitlement which expected respect when he appeared in a room or the supreme consciousness about his honorifics used on his correspondence in communication to his friends.

He avoided accountability while his mother, who inexplicably pampered him, was still alive. The sovereign did at least remove him of public duties and military positions in the aftermath of his ill-fated and, it is now clear, untruthful television interview six years ago.

Current Situation

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

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's thinking that he could avoid being untruthful about his interaction with a notorious figure.

Society (and the press) were far more perceptive of the monarchy. There was no one of any importance to speak up for him, a consequence of all those years of hubris.

Monarchical Concerns

The wiser monarchical figures understood that. The one imperative is to transfer the institution, if not as previously at least intact and untarnished.

Over time the last 190 years trying to reverse the reputation of earlier rulers, showing they are useful, accountable and attentive to their people.

His actions endangered all that in danger in an time when respect and secrecy is no longer sufficient.

The Fallout

Ultimately, the well-known uncertain monarch was prodded further. There was no alternative. The palace had surrendered command of the account.

Currently the removal of titles and the continued and lifetime personal shame that will pain Andrew the most.

• Reduction: Demoted to just a commoner
• Historical Precedent: The initial monarch to surrender his titles in modern times
• Armed Forces: Especially stinging given his service in the engagement

He continues to be a constitutional officer, on paper able to stand in for the sovereign, and he is still in the succession to the throne, but neither of these will actually happen.

Coming Developments

Do individuals he encounters still show respect to him? Could they still slip up and call him Your Highness? Would they say Mr,

Certainly, he is not retiring to an ordinary town, but to the royal family's large estate at Sandringham.

There, he will be supplied by the sovereign with one of the estate properties and given some form of private allowance.

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

Unresolved Issues

Matters remain unresolved. There are still documents in the hands of American legislators to be made public.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Will lawmakers request additional information
• Fiscal Review: Or investigate the improper use of taxpayer funds
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his behavior

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

Changed Stance

No more pretence that Andrew was acting willingly. And, significantly, the brief communication showed plainly that the institution were aligning with the victim's narrative of incidents.

Furthermore, for the first time they eventually showed regard for the victims: "The censures are considered essential, notwithstanding the fact that he maintains his innocence of the claims against him."

Finally it is arrogance, selfishness and indolence that will kill the monarchy. In his stupidity, self-gratification and venality, Andrew seems never to have grasped that lesson.