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It all began with a solitary photograph, perhaps the most consequential ever taken of a royal family member.

There stood the Baron Killyleagh, with his arm around a female youth, while another individual beamed suggestively in the background.

Lacking that photograph, taken at a party in 2001, few would have credited the assertions of a teenager who stated she was trafficked across the ocean and compelled to have brief intimate contact with a prince of the royal family?

A strange, telling move by someone who had openly stated to have never known about her, asserted he could never have had sex with her, and yet provided a large amount of his mother's money to avert a long-delayed legal case.

A Long Period of Disgrace

Considering this, talk of the royals acting firmly to sever ties with Andrew are inaccurate. This scandal has persisted for the largest portion of 15 years since that image, and an additional image of Andrew strolling congenially with a notorious individual surfaced.

• Self-importance: To what extent did his family members, maybe even his mother and father, know that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have understood, if his aides and the law enforcement were performing their duties, that he had some deeply disreputable associates given he openly hosted them to palaces.
• Fiscal Irresponsibility: If the monarchy did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his extravagance with public money.

Journeys were listed in royal annual reports: chopper flights from the royal residence to a sporting venue and back again in time for lunch, exclusive air travel instead of regular transport, all for the comfort of "Airmiles Andy".

Existence of Entitlement

Furthermore the entitlement which expected deference when he walked into a space or the supreme consciousness about his honorifics used on his correspondence in messages to his friends.

He avoided accountability while his mother, who unaccountably spoiled him, was still surviving. The sovereign did at least strip him of public duties and honorary colonelcies in the consequence of his disastrous and, it is now clear, untruthful television interview six years ago.

Recent Developments

Just in the last 14 days that events progressed rapidly, following the issuance of books giving more troubling particulars of his conduct and that of his companions.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's belief that he could get away with deceiving about his contact with a convicted criminal.

The public (and the journalists) were far ahead of the royals. There was not a single person of any consequence to support him, a consequence of all those years of arrogance.

Monarchical Concerns

The wiser monarchical figures understood that. The one imperative is to transfer the crown, if not as before at least complete and unstained.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to undo the reputation of earlier rulers, showing they are beneficial, responsible and responsive to their people.

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

Aftermath

Eventually, the famously indecisive sovereign was prodded more. There was little choice. The royal household had lost control of the narrative.

Now it is the stripping of titles and the ongoing and permanent social disgrace that will hurt Andrew most deeply.

• Demotion: Reduced to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Prior Instance: The first monarch to surrender his titles in recent history
• Military Service: Especially painful given his duty in the engagement

He remains a royal advisor, theoretically able to stand in for the monarch, and he is still in the lineage to the crown, but none of these will actually happen.

What Lies Ahead

Can persons he encounters still defer to him? Will they still make mistakes and call him Sir? Will they even say Andrew,

Certainly, he is not moving to an ordinary town, but to the royal family's extensive property at a royal residence.

There, he will be supplied by the monarch with one of the estate properties and given some type of financial support.

This is not his former home, where he paid a nominal lease for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit remote, but even so it may not be far enough.

Outstanding Concerns

The situation continues. There are still files in the hands of overseas authorities to be disclosed.

• Parliamentary Interest: Could legislators demand more
• Financial Investigation: Or examine the waste of state resources
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a criminal probe into his behavior

Possibly for the present the reputational impact to the crown is limited. The narrative from the royal household was plainly that the removal of titles was what the monarch, and particularly other senior monarchical figures, wanted.

A Shift in Position

An end to pretence that Andrew was acting willingly. And, remarkably, the short announcement showed evidently that the monarchy were siding with the complainant's account of occurrences.

Even more, for the premiere occasion they finally showed regard for the victims: "The measures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he maintains his innocence of the accusations against him."

Finally it is arrogance, self-interest and laziness that will destroy the monarchy. In his folly, self-indulgence and greed, Andrew seems never to have understood that reality.