🔗 Share this article

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

Present was the Earl of Inverness, arm-in-arm a young woman, while an associate grinned conspiratorially in the rear.

Lacking that photograph, captured at a social event in 2001, who would have believed the assertions of a teenager who declared she was trafficked across the ocean and obliged to have brief relations with a prince of the royal family?

A curious, telling gesture by someone who had overtly claimed to have never heard of her, asserted he could never have had relations with her, and yet handed over a large amount of monarchical money to settle a long-delayed legal case.

Years of Controversy

Considering this, talk of the royal family acting swiftly to sever ties with Andrew are wide of the mark. This controversy has endured for the largest portion of 15 years since that photograph, and a further image of Andrew strolling pleasantly with a disgraced financier emerged.

• Self-importance: To what extent did his brothers and sisters, perhaps even his parents, understand that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Problematic Connections: They must have known, if his employees and the law enforcement were fulfilling their roles, that he had some deeply disreputable associates given he openly hosted them to royal residences.
• Monetary Excess: If the household did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with taxpayer funds.

Trips were listed in public records: helicopter flights from the royal residence to a golf course and back again in time for dining, chartered planes instead of scheduled services, all for the benefit of "the travel enthusiast".

Existence of Entitlement

Then there was the entitlement which demanded subservience when he walked into a room or the profound obsession about his designations used on his letterheads in letters to his friends.

He could get away with it while his parent, who strangely spoiled him, was still surviving. The sovereign did at least revoke him of official roles and military positions in the wake of his ill-fated and, it is now clear, deceptive media appearance six years ago.

Latest Events

Just in the last fortnight that events sped up, following the release of biographical works giving more troubling particulars of his actions and that of his connections.

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

People (and the journalists) were far in advance of the monarchy. There was nobody of any consequence to defend him, a outcome of all those years of presumption.

Royal Worries

The wiser monarchical figures understood that. The key objective is to hand down the crown, if not as heretofore at least intact and unstained.

For generations the last 190 years trying to undo the legacy of past sovereigns, proving they are valuable, responsible and attentive to their citizens.

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

Consequences

Finally, the famously uncertain monarch was pushed additional. There was no alternative. The royal household had surrendered command of the account.

Currently the loss of honorifics and the persistent and lifetime public humiliation that will pain Andrew most deeply.

• Reduction: Lowered to just a commoner
• Past Example: The first royal to forfeit his titles in modern times
• Naval Career: Especially painful given his role in the Falklands war

He continues to be a royal advisor, theoretically able to substitute for the sovereign, and he is still in the lineage to the crown, but none of these will truly happen.

Coming Developments

Do individuals he meets still defer to him? Will they still forget themselves and call him Prince? Would they say Sir,

Of course, he is not retiring to an ordinary town, but to the sovereign's vast grounds at Sandringham.

In that place, he will be provided by the monarch with one of the royal residences and given some form of personal stipend.

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

Pending Matters

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

• Governmental Scrutiny: Could parliament request additional information
• Fiscal Review: Or examine the waste of taxpayer funds
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his actions

Perhaps for the present the reputational impact to the crown is restricted. The statement from the palace was plainly that the stripping of titles was what the king, and especially other senior family members, wanted.

A Shift in Position

No more deception that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, significantly, the brief communication showed clearly that the institution were siding with the complainant's version of occurrences.

Additionally, for the first time they ultimately showed concern for the victims: "These actions are judged required, despite the reality that he maintains his innocence of the allegations against him."

In the end it is presumption, selfishness and laziness that will undermine the institution. In his folly, self-indulgence and corruption, Andrew gives the impression never to have grasped that truth.