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The saga started with a solitary photograph, arguably the most significant ever captured of a member of the monarchy.

There stood the Baron Killyleagh, arm-in-arm a teenage girl, while another individual smiled knowingly in the backdrop.

Without that photograph, taken at a gathering in 2001, few would have credited the claims of a teenager who declared she was transported across the sea and obliged to have perfunctory relations with a member of the royal bloodline?

A strange, indicative gesture by someone who had openly claimed to have never been aware of her, asserted he could no have had relations with her, and yet provided a substantial sum of his mother's money to resolve a drawn-out court action.

Over a Decade of Disgrace

In this context, discussions of the royal family acting decisively to cut Andrew off are misguided. This controversy has continued for the majority of 15 years since that picture, and an additional photo of Andrew strolling amiably with a convicted sex offender came to light.

• Self-importance: To what extent did his family members, maybe even his relatives, understand that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have understood, if his employees and the law enforcement were performing their duties, that he had some highly questionable friends given he publicly invited them to royal residences.
• Financial Extravagance: If the household did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his overspending with taxpayer funds.

Travel were listed in public records: helicopter transfers from the royal residence to a golf course and back again in time for midday meal, private flights instead of regular transport, all for the convenience of "Airmiles Andy".

A Life of Privilege

Furthermore the entitlement which expected subservience when he appeared in a area or the supreme obsession about his honorifics used on his official documents in messages to his associates.

He avoided accountability while his parent, who strangely indulged him, was still surviving. The sovereign did at least revoke him of royal responsibilities and honorary colonelcies in the aftermath of his disastrous and, as revealed, mendacious television interview six years ago.

Recent Developments

Merely in the last 14 days that events sped up, following the issuance of books giving more troubling details of his conduct and that of his associates.

Additional revelations have again exposed Andrew's thinking that he could get away with being untruthful about his contact with a convicted criminal.

Society (and the press) were far in advance of the monarchy. There was not a single person of any importance to support him, a outcome of all those years of presumption.

Royal Worries

The wiser monarchical figures recognized that. The one imperative is to transfer the institution, if not as before at least whole and unblemished.

Over time the last 190 years trying to overcome the image of earlier rulers, proving they are beneficial, responsible and reactive to their subjects.

His actions endangered all that in peril in an era when deference and discretion is no longer enough.

Consequences

Ultimately, the famously indecisive monarch was pressured further. There was no alternative. The royal household had lost control of the account.

Currently the stripping of designations and the continued and life-long personal shame that will afflict Andrew most deeply.

• Downgrading: Reduced to just a commoner
• Past Example: The primary royal to lose his honorifics in recent history
• Military Service: Notably hurtful given his role in the Falklands war

He is still a constitutional officer, on paper able to stand in for the monarch, and he is still in the lineage to the crown, but none of these will actually happen.

Coming Developments

Can persons he comes across still defer to him? Will they still make mistakes and call him Prince? Would they say Andrew,

Certainly, he is not withdrawing to suburbia, but to the monarchy's extensive estate at Sandringham.

At that location, he will be provided by the sovereign with one of the royal residences and given some type of personal stipend.

It is not his previous residence, where he paid a minimal rent for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit distant, but even so it may not be adequate distance.

Outstanding Concerns

This is not over. There are still records in the custody of US Congress to be revealed.

• Political Pressure: Might parliament demand more
• Fiscal Review: Or investigate the waste of public money
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his behavior

Perhaps for the moment the harm to the monarchy to the monarchy is limited. The message from the royal household was evidently that the stripping of honorifics was what the sovereign, and notably other senior royals, sought.

Altered Approach

An end to illusion that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, significantly, the concise communication showed evidently that the royals were aligning with the victim's version of incidents.

Even more, for the initial instance they eventually showed consideration for the survivors: "The measures are considered essential, regardless of the fact that he maintains his innocence of the accusations against him."

Ultimately it is entitlement, self-seeking and inactivity that will destroy the crown. In his foolishness, self-indulgence and venality, Andrew seems never to have grasped that reality.