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This episode commenced with a single photograph, possibly the most significant ever snapped of a individual from the royal household.

There stood the Baron Killyleagh, with his arm around a female youth, while an associate beamed knowingly in the rear.

Without that image, captured at a party in 2001, who would have believed the assertions of a adolescent who stated she was transported across the sea and obliged to have cursory relations with a member of the monarchy?

A curious, revealing gesture by someone who had overtly asserted to have never known about her, claimed he could never have had sex with her, and yet handed over millions of his mother's money to avert a protracted legal case.

Years of Controversy

Against this backdrop, talk of the royal family acting swiftly to distance themselves from Andrew are inaccurate. This scandal has persisted for the better part of 15 years since that photograph, and another image of Andrew walking amiably with a notorious individual surfaced.

• Hubris: To what extent did his family members, maybe even his mother and father, understand that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Questionable Associations: They must have realized, if his employees and the law enforcement were performing their duties, that he had some extremely unsavory companions given he publicly welcomed them to estates.
• Monetary Excess: If the family did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his overspending with state resources.

Travel were documented in public records: private aircraft transfers from the royal residence to a golf course and back again in time for dining, exclusive air travel instead of regular transport, all for the comfort of "the frequent flyer".

World of Deference

Additionally the arrogance which demanded respect when he walked into a area or the extreme obsession about his royal titles used on his correspondence in messages to his friends.

He managed to escape consequences while his matriarch, who unaccountably spoiled him, was still living. The monarch did at least remove him of public duties and military positions in the wake of his catastrophic and, we now know, deceptive public statement six years ago.

Recent Developments

Just in the last fortnight that events accelerated, following the publication of accounts giving more troubling details of his behavior and that of his associates.

Further disclosures have again revealed Andrew's belief that he could escape deceiving about his interaction with a disgraced individual.

Society (and the press) were far ahead of the royals. There was not a single person of any significance to speak up for him, a outcome of all those years of arrogance.

Monarchical Concerns

The wiser family members recognized that. The primary concern is to pass on the crown, if not as previously at least intact and unblemished.

Over time the last 190 years trying to reverse the reputation of earlier rulers, demonstrating they are useful, responsible and responsive to their subjects.

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

The Fallout

Eventually, the well-known uncertain monarch was prodded additional. There was little choice. The palace had relinquished authority of the narrative.

Now it is the stripping of honorifics and the ongoing and lifetime personal shame that will afflict Andrew the most.

• Downgrading: Reduced to just a private citizen
• Past Example: The first monarch to forfeit his honorifics in modern times
• Military Service: Especially painful given his service in the Falklands war

He continues to be a constitutional officer, in principle able to substitute for the sovereign, and he is still in the lineage to the monarchy, but none of these will truly occur.

Future Prospects

Can persons he encounters still acknowledge him? Might they still forget themselves and call him Your Highness? Will they even say Sir,

Of course, he is not withdrawing to suburbia, but to the monarchy's extensive grounds at Sandringham.

In that place, he will be furnished by the monarch with one of the estate properties and given some sort of personal stipend.

It is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a token rent for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit distant, but even so it may not be adequate distance.

Pending Matters

This is not over. There are still documents in the hands of overseas authorities to be revealed.

• Parliamentary Interest: Might legislators demand more
• Monetary Probe: Or scrutinize the improper use of state resources
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a criminal probe into his behavior

Perhaps for the moment the institutional damage to the crown is contained. The statement from the palace was clearly that the removal of designations was what the monarch, and especially other senior royals, desired.

Altered Approach

The cessation of illusion that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, remarkably, the brief communication showed clearly that the institution were siding with the victim's narrative of incidents.

Additionally, for the initial instance they ultimately showed concern for the survivors: "The measures are considered essential, notwithstanding the truth that he maintains his innocence of the allegations against him."

Finally it is arrogance, self-seeking and indolence that will kill the institution. In his folly, self-indulgence and greed, Andrew seems never to have understood that lesson.