🔗 Share this article

It all began with a isolated photograph, possibly the most consequential ever snapped of a individual from the royal household.

There stood the Duke of York, arm-in-arm a teenage girl, while an associate smiled suggestively in the background.

Absent that photograph, captured at a party in 2001, few would have credited the claims of a adolescent who stated she was transported across the ocean and compelled to have cursory sexual encounters with a prince of the royal bloodline?

An odd, revealing move by someone who had publicly stated to have not known about her, said he could no have had relations with her, and yet provided a substantial sum of family money to avert a protracted court action.

Years of Controversy

In this context, conversations of the royal family acting firmly to cut Andrew off are inaccurate. This controversy has persisted for the better part of 15 years since that image, and an additional snapshot of Andrew ambling congenially with a notorious individual emerged.

• Hubris: To what extent did his brothers and sisters, perhaps even his mother and father, realize that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Questionable Associations: They must have known, if his employees and the law enforcement were fulfilling their roles, that he had some deeply disreputable associates given he publicly hosted them to royal residences.
• Monetary Excess: If the monarchy did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with state resources.

Travel were listed in public records: private aircraft flights from the royal residence to a country club and back again in time for dining, chartered planes instead of scheduled services, all for the benefit of "Airmiles Andy".

World of Deference

Additionally the presumption which required respect when he entered a room or the supreme awareness about his designations used on his correspondence in messages to his associates.

He managed to escape consequences while his mother, who inexplicably spoiled him, was still living. The sovereign did at least strip him of royal responsibilities and military positions in the consequence of his disastrous and, it is now clear, mendacious public statement six years ago.

Recent Developments

Merely in the last two weeks that events accelerated, following the publication of accounts giving more troubling details of his conduct and that of his companions.

Further disclosures have again exposed Andrew's belief that he could get away with deceiving about his interaction with a convicted criminal.

Society (and the media) were far ahead of the monarchy. There was nobody of any significance to speak up for him, a consequence of all those years of hubris.

Royal Worries

The more intelligent family members realized that. The key objective is to hand down the crown, if not as previously at least intact and untarnished.

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

Andrew was putting all that in peril in an time when deference and discretion is no longer adequate.

The Fallout

Finally, the well-known uncertain monarch was pressured more. There was little choice. The institution had lost control of the narrative.

Now it is the stripping of honorifics and the persistent and lifetime social disgrace that will hurt Andrew most deeply.

• Downgrading: Reduced to just a private citizen
• Prior Instance: The primary monarch to forfeit his designations in modern times
• Naval Career: Notably painful given his service in the Falklands war

He is still a royal advisor, in principle able to stand in for the sovereign, and he is still eighth in line to the monarchy, but none of these will actually come to pass.

What Lies Ahead

Will people he encounters still defer to him? Might they still slip up and call him Sir? Would they say Sir,

Of course, he is not moving to suburbia, but to the royal family's vast grounds at a royal residence.

There, he will be provided by the sovereign with one of the royal residences and given some sort of personal stipend.

This differs from his previous residence, where he paid a nominal payment for more than 20 years, and Norfolk is a bit distant, but even so it may not be far enough.

Outstanding Concerns

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

• Parliamentary Interest: Could lawmakers seek further action
• Monetary Probe: Or examine the misuse of state resources
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a police investigation into his conduct

Possibly for the moment the institutional damage to the monarchy is restricted. The statement from the royal household was clearly that the revocation of designations was what the monarch, and especially other senior monarchical figures, sought.

Altered Approach

No more pretence that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, notably, the short communication showed evidently that the monarchy were supporting the accuser's account of occurrences.

Even more, for the first time they finally showed regard for the survivors: "The censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the truth that he maintains his innocence of the accusations against him."

Finally it is entitlement, selfishness and laziness that will destroy the crown. In his folly, self-gratification and corruption, Andrew seems never to have grasped that truth.