🔗 Share this article

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

In the frame appeared the Baron Killyleagh, standing closely beside a teenage girl, while another individual grinned knowingly in the backdrop.

Without that image, taken at a party in 2001, who would have believed the allegations of a teenager who stated she was trafficked across the ocean and obliged to have brief relations with a individual of the royal family?

An odd, indicative action by someone who had publicly claimed to have never heard of her, said he could never have had sex with her, and yet paid a substantial sum of his mother's money to settle a long-delayed legal case.

A Long Period of Scandal

In this context, talk of the royals acting swiftly to distance themselves from Andrew are wide of the mark. This controversy has endured for the better part of 15 years since that image, and an additional snapshot of Andrew walking pleasantly with a disgraced financier surfaced.

• Arrogance: For what duration did his brothers and sisters, possibly even his mother and father, realize that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Problematic Connections: They must have realized, if his staff and the law enforcement were fulfilling their roles, that he had some deeply disreputable associates given he publicly invited them to palaces.
• Fiscal Irresponsibility: If the household did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his extravagance with public money.

Travel were documented in official documents: chopper transfers from the palace to a country club and back again in time for midday meal, chartered planes instead of scheduled services, all for the benefit of "the travel enthusiast".

Existence of Entitlement

Furthermore the arrogance which required subservience when he entered a space or the supreme consciousness about his designations used on his letterheads in messages to his friends.

He could get away with it while his parent, who inexplicably indulged him, was still living. The sovereign did at least remove him of royal responsibilities and honorary colonelcies in the wake of his catastrophic and, as revealed, untruthful public statement six years ago.

Current Situation

It was only in the last 14 days that events progressed rapidly, following the publication of accounts giving more troubling particulars of his actions and that of his connections.

Further disclosures have again revealed Andrew's thinking that he could avoid lying about his contact with a notorious figure.

People (and the journalists) were far ahead of the monarchy. There was nobody of any significance to support him, a result of all those years of arrogance.

Monarchical Concerns

The more astute royals understood that. The one imperative is to hand down the crown, if not as heretofore at least complete and untarnished.

Over time the last 190 years trying to undo the image of earlier rulers, showing they are beneficial, dutiful and attentive to their subjects.

He was placing all that in danger in an age when deference and secrecy is no longer adequate.

The Fallout

Eventually, the notoriously hesitant sovereign was pressured more. There was no alternative. The royal household had relinquished authority of the narrative.

Currently the removal of titles and the ongoing and life-long personal shame that will afflict Andrew most deeply.

• Demotion: Reduced to just a commoner
• Past Example: The initial member to surrender his honorifics in recent history
• Naval Career: Especially hurtful given his service in the Falklands war

He is still a constitutional officer, on paper able to substitute for the king, and he is still in the succession to the monarchy, but none of these will actually occur.

Future Prospects

Do individuals he comes across still defer to him? Might they still slip up and call him Your Highness? Might they say Andrew,

Of course, he is not moving to a common area, but to the monarchy's vast grounds at a monarchical property.

There, he will be supplied by the monarch with one of the grace and favour houses and given some sort of personal stipend.

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

Pending Matters

This is not over. There are still records in the hands of overseas authorities to be disclosed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Could lawmakers seek further action
• Monetary Probe: Or investigate the misuse of taxpayer funds
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his actions

Perhaps for the moment the reputational impact to the institution is restricted. The narrative from the royal household was plainly that the stripping of honorifics was what the sovereign, and especially other senior monarchical figures, desired.

Altered Approach

No more illusion that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, notably, the concise statement showed plainly that the royals were supporting the victim's narrative of incidents.

Furthermore, for the premiere occasion they ultimately showed consideration for the victims: "The censures are considered essential, despite the reality that he persists in refuting the accusations against him."

Finally it is presumption, self-interest and inactivity that will undermine the institution. In his folly, self-gratification and venality, Andrew appears never to have understood that reality.