🔗 Share this article

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

Present was the Earl of Inverness, standing closely beside a teenage girl, while a companion beamed suggestively in the backdrop.

Absent that image, shot at a party in 2001, who would have believed the allegations of a teenager who said she was transported across the ocean and compelled to have brief intimate contact with a member of the monarchy?

A curious, revealing action by someone who had publicly asserted to have never known about her, said he could never have had relations with her, and yet provided millions of family resources to resolve a drawn-out lawsuit.

A Long Period of Disgrace

Against this backdrop, discussions of the royal family acting decisively to cut Andrew off are inaccurate. This affair has endured for the majority of 15 years since that image, and a further image of Andrew strolling pleasantly with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Arrogance: How long did his family members, perhaps even his mother and father, understand that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have known, if his employees and the authorities were fulfilling their roles, that he had some extremely unsavory companions given he openly welcomed them to estates.
• Monetary Excess: If the household did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his extravagance with state resources.

Travel were listed in royal annual reports: chopper flights from the royal residence to a sporting venue and back again in time for dining, exclusive air travel instead of commercial flights, all for the comfort of "the frequent flyer".

Existence of Entitlement

Additionally the presumption which required subservience when he walked into a area or the supreme obsession about his honorifics used on his official documents in letters to his personal acquaintances.

He could get away with it while his mother, who unaccountably indulged him, was still surviving. The sovereign did at least strip him of public duties and military positions in the consequence of his disastrous and, we now know, deceptive public statement six years ago.

Current Situation

Merely in the last fortnight that events sped up, following the issuance of books giving more disturbing information of his actions and that of his companions.

Additional revelations have again revealed Andrew's thinking that he could escape being untruthful about his contact with a disgraced individual.

The public (and the press) were far ahead of the royals. There was nobody of any consequence to speak up for him, a consequence of all those years of arrogance.

Institutional Fears

The more astute royals recognized that. The one imperative is to transfer the crown, if not as previously at least intact and unstained.

Over time the last 190 years trying to reverse the reputation of previous monarchs, demonstrating they are beneficial, responsible and reactive to their people.

He was placing all that in peril in an time when respect and privacy is no longer adequate.

The Fallout

Eventually, the notoriously hesitant king was prodded more. There was no alternative. The palace had relinquished authority of the account.

Currently the removal of titles and the persistent and life-long personal shame that will pain Andrew most deeply.

• Demotion: Lowered to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Past Example: The primary monarch to forfeit his designations in contemporary era
• Armed Forces: Especially painful given his role in the Falklands war

He remains a counsellor of state, on paper able to stand in for the monarch, and he is still in the lineage to the monarchy, but not any of these will truly come to pass.

Coming Developments

Will people he encounters still defer to him? Will they still forget themselves and call him Your Highness? Will they even say Sir,

Naturally, he is not moving to an ordinary town, but to the sovereign's large estate at a royal residence.

In that place, he will be provided by the king with one of the estate properties and given some form of financial support.

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

Unresolved Issues

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

• Political Pressure: Could lawmakers demand more
• Financial Investigation: Or examine the waste of public money
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a police investigation into his behavior

Maybe for the present the institutional damage to the monarchy is contained. The message from the institution was clearly that the stripping of honorifics was what the monarch, and notably other senior family members, wanted.

A Shift in Position

The cessation of illusion that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, notably, the short statement showed evidently that the institution were supporting the complainant's account of events.

Furthermore, for the premiere occasion they ultimately showed concern for the victims: "The censures are considered essential, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the claims against him."

In the end it is arrogance, selfishness and inactivity that will undermine the crown. In his stupidity, self-gratification and corruption, Andrew gives the impression never to have grasped that reality.