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The saga started with a isolated photograph, possibly the most significant ever snapped of a member of the monarchy.

Present was the Earl of Inverness, with his arm around a young woman, while a companion beamed suggestively in the rear.

Without that image, taken at a party in 2001, few would have credited the allegations of a teenager who stated she was transported across the ocean and compelled to have brief relations with a prince of the royal family?

An odd, indicative move by someone who had publicly asserted to have never known about her, asserted he could no have had sex with her, and yet handed over a substantial sum of monarchical funds to avert a protracted legal case.

Over a Decade of Scandal

Considering this, talk of the royal family acting firmly to sever ties with Andrew are misguided. This scandal has persisted for the better part of 15 years since that picture, and a further snapshot of Andrew ambling amiably with a disgraced financier surfaced.

• Hubris: For what duration did his family members, possibly even his parents, understand that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Problematic Connections: They must have realized, if his aides and the law enforcement were performing their duties, that he had some deeply disreputable associates given he unabashedly hosted them to palaces.
• Monetary Excess: If the monarchy did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with public money.

Trips were documented in official documents: private aircraft travel from the palace to a golf course and back again in time for dining, chartered planes instead of scheduled services, all for the convenience of "Airmiles Andy".

World of Deference

Then there was the presumption which demanded deference when he entered a space or the supreme awareness about his royal titles used on his official documents in messages to his personal acquaintances.

He managed to escape consequences while his matriarch, who unaccountably indulged him, was still living. The monarch did at least strip him of official roles and ceremonial ranks in the wake of his disastrous and, as revealed, mendacious television interview six years ago.

Latest Events

Merely in the last 14 days that events accelerated, following the issuance of biographical works giving more grim details of his actions and that of his connections.

Further disclosures have again revealed Andrew's thinking that he could get away with lying about his contact with a disgraced individual.

People (and the journalists) were far more perceptive of the monarchy. There was not a single person of any consequence to speak up for him, a result of all those years of arrogance.

Institutional Fears

The more intelligent family members understood that. The one imperative is to pass on the institution, if not as previously at least intact and untarnished.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to undo the legacy of earlier rulers, demonstrating they are beneficial, responsible and reactive to their citizens.

Andrew was putting all that in jeopardy in an age when submission and secrecy is no longer sufficient.

The Fallout

Ultimately, the notoriously uncertain sovereign was pushed additional. There was little choice. The institution had lost control of the narrative.

Presently the removal of honorifics and the ongoing and lifetime personal shame that will afflict Andrew the most.

• Downgrading: Reduced to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Historical Precedent: The first monarch to surrender his honorifics in contemporary era
• Military Service: Especially stinging given his service in the Falklands war

He continues to be a royal advisor, on paper able to stand in for the king, and he is still in the lineage to the throne, but none of these will truly happen.

Future Prospects

Do individuals he encounters still defer to him? Will they still slip up and call him Your Highness? Would they say Andrew,

Certainly, he is not moving to an ordinary town, but to the sovereign's large estate at Sandringham.

In that place, he will be supplied by the monarch 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 minimal lease for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit far, but even so it may not be far enough.

Pending Matters

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

• Political Pressure: Might parliament seek further action
• Financial Investigation: Or scrutinize the waste of state resources
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a police investigation into his behavior

Possibly for the moment the institutional damage to the monarchy is restricted. The narrative from the institution was plainly that the stripping of honorifics was what the sovereign, and notably other senior royals, sought.

Altered Approach

No more illusion that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, remarkably, the short communication showed clearly that the royals were aligning with the victim's account of events.

Furthermore, for the premiere occasion they finally showed consideration for the affected individuals: "The censures are deemed necessary, despite the truth that he continues to deny the allegations against him."

In the end it is entitlement, self-seeking and laziness that will undermine the crown. In his stupidity, self-indulgence and greed, Andrew appears never to have understood that reality.