🔗 Share this article

This episode commenced with a solitary photograph, perhaps the most significant ever taken of a individual from the royal household.

Present was the Baron Killyleagh, with his arm around a teenage girl, while another individual beamed knowingly in the background.

Without that image, taken at a social event in 2001, who would have believed the assertions of a teenager who declared she was transported across the sea and forced to have cursory relations with a member of the royal bloodline?

A curious, telling gesture by someone who had openly claimed to have never heard of her, claimed he could no have had sex with her, and yet provided millions of family funds to resolve a protracted legal case.

A Long Period of Disgrace

In this context, talk of the royal family acting decisively to cut Andrew off are inaccurate. This scandal has endured for the majority of 15 years since that image, and a further photo of Andrew strolling amiably with a disgraced financier emerged.

• Self-importance: For what duration did his family members, maybe even his mother and father, understand that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Questionable Associations: They must have realized, if his staff and the law enforcement were fulfilling their roles, that he had some extremely unsavory friends given he unabashedly invited them to palaces.
• Financial Extravagance: If the household did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with taxpayer funds.

Journeys were printed in royal annual reports: private aircraft flights from the royal residence to a golf course and back again in time for lunch, exclusive air travel instead of scheduled services, all for the convenience of "the travel enthusiast".

World of Deference

Furthermore the presumption which demanded respect when he entered a space or the supreme obsession about his royal titles used on his official documents in messages to his friends.

He avoided accountability while his matriarch, who unaccountably indulged him, was still alive. The Queen did at least remove him of official roles and honorary colonelcies in the consequence of his catastrophic and, it is now clear, mendacious television interview six years ago.

Recent Developments

Merely in the last fortnight that events accelerated, following the publication of books giving more grim details of his actions and that of his connections.

More information have again exposed Andrew's thinking that he could escape deceiving about his contact with a convicted criminal.

People (and the press) were far ahead of the monarchy. There was nobody of any significance to support him, a result of all those years of hubris.

Institutional Fears

The more astute family members understood that. The primary concern is to pass on the crown, if not as before at least intact and unstained.

For generations the last 190 years trying to overcome the image of past sovereigns, demonstrating they are useful, dutiful and reactive to their subjects.

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

Aftermath

Finally, the well-known indecisive sovereign was prodded additional. There was no alternative. The royal household had surrendered command of the account.

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

• Demotion: Lowered to just a private citizen
• Historical Precedent: The primary member to lose his designations in contemporary era
• Naval Career: Especially painful given his role in the Falklands war

He is still a constitutional officer, in principle able to act for the king, and he is still in the succession to the monarchy, but neither of these will truly come to pass.

Coming Developments

Do individuals he meets still acknowledge him? Might they still slip up and call him Sir? Would they say Sir,

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

There, he will be furnished by the monarch with one of the royal residences and given some type of personal stipend.

This differs from his prior accommodation, 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 far enough.

Outstanding Concerns

Matters remain unresolved. There are still documents in the custody of overseas authorities to be revealed.

• Parliamentary Interest: Will legislators demand more
• Monetary Probe: Or examine the waste of state resources
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his actions

Maybe for the present the harm to the monarchy to the crown is restricted. The message from the royal household was evidently that the revocation of honorifics was what the king, and notably other senior royals, sought.

A Shift in Position

An end to deception that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, significantly, the brief announcement showed evidently that the royals were siding with the victim's narrative of incidents.

Furthermore, for the initial instance they ultimately showed concern for the survivors: "The censures are judged required, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the accusations against him."

In the end it is entitlement, selfishness and laziness that will undermine the monarchy. In his stupidity, self-gratification and greed, Andrew seems never to have learned that truth.