🔗 Share this article

This episode commenced with a isolated photograph, possibly the most impactful ever taken of a royal family member.

There stood the Duke of York, with his arm around a young woman, while a companion smiled conspiratorially in the rear.

Without that image, shot at a gathering in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the allegations of a adolescent who declared she was moved across the ocean and forced to have brief sexual encounters with a individual of the royal family?

A strange, revealing move by someone who had publicly stated to have no known about her, asserted he could not have had relations with her, and yet handed over a large amount of family resources to settle a protracted lawsuit.

A Long Period of Scandal

In this context, discussions of the royal family acting swiftly to distance themselves from Andrew are misguided. This affair has continued for the majority of 15 years since that photograph, and another snapshot of Andrew strolling congenially with a notorious individual surfaced.

• Hubris: To what extent did his siblings, possibly even his mother and father, realize that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have realized, if his aides and the police were performing their duties, that he had some extremely unsavory associates given he publicly invited them to royal residences.
• Financial Extravagance: If the monarchy did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his overspending with public money.

Travel were documented in royal annual reports: helicopter flights from the estate to a sporting venue and back again in time for midday meal, chartered planes instead of commercial flights, all for the convenience of "Airmiles Andy".

A Life of Privilege

Then there was the presumption which demanded deference when he appeared in a space or the supreme awareness about his designations used on his official documents in communication to his friends.

He could get away with it while his matriarch, who inexplicably spoiled him, was still living. The monarch did at least strip him of official roles and military positions in the aftermath of his catastrophic and, it is now clear, deceptive public statement six years ago.

Latest Events

Merely in the last 14 days that events accelerated, following the publication of biographical works giving more troubling information of his behavior and that of his associates.

Further disclosures have again revealed Andrew's assumption that he could avoid being untruthful about his contact with a disgraced individual.

People (and the journalists) were far more perceptive of the monarchy. There was nobody of any significance to defend him, a result of all those years of hubris.

Royal Worries

The more astute monarchical figures understood that. The key objective is to pass on the crown, if not as previously at least whole and unstained.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to undo the legacy of past sovereigns, demonstrating they are useful, accountable and attentive to their subjects.

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

Aftermath

Finally, the notoriously indecisive sovereign was pressured further. There was little choice. The royal household had lost control of the story.

Presently the removal of titles and the continued and life-long personal shame that will pain Andrew most severely.

• Reduction: Lowered to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Prior Instance: The initial monarch to lose his titles in modern times
• Naval Career: Particularly stinging given his duty in the conflict

He continues to be a royal advisor, in principle able to substitute for the monarch, and he is still in the succession to the monarchy, but none of these will actually happen.

Future Prospects

Can persons he meets still acknowledge him? Might they still forget themselves and call him Your Highness? Would they say Mr,

Certainly, he is not retiring to a common area, but to the royal family's large grounds at a monarchical property.

At that location, he will be supplied by the sovereign with one of the grace and favour houses and given some sort of financial support.

This is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a token payment for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit far, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Pending Matters

This is not over. There are still files in the hands of US Congress to be made public.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Could lawmakers demand more
• Fiscal Review: Or investigate the waste of state resources
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a police investigation into his conduct

Perhaps for the moment the harm to the monarchy to the institution is contained. The message from the palace was plainly that the removal of honorifics was what the sovereign, and especially other senior monarchical figures, wanted.

Altered Approach

No more pretence that Andrew was acting willingly. And, remarkably, the concise statement showed evidently that the royals were aligning with the victim's narrative of occurrences.

Furthermore, for the premiere occasion they finally showed concern for the survivors: "These actions are considered essential, regardless of the reality that he persists in refuting the allegations against him."

Finally it is presumption, selfishness and inactivity that will undermine the crown. In his foolishness, self-indulgence and greed, Andrew gives the impression never to have understood that reality.