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The saga started with a solitary photograph, perhaps the most impactful ever taken of a individual from the royal household.

In the frame appeared the Baron Killyleagh, with his arm around a teenage girl, while a companion grinned suggestively in the rear.

Without that image, taken at a social event in 2001, who would have believed the claims of a teenager who declared she was transported across the Atlantic and forced to have perfunctory sexual encounters with a member of the monarchy?

A curious, revealing action by someone who had overtly stated to have not known about her, asserted he could never have had intimate contact with her, and yet provided millions of his mother's resources to resolve a drawn-out court action.

Years of Controversy

Considering this, conversations of the royal family acting decisively to distance themselves from Andrew are misguided. This scandal has continued for the better part of 15 years since that photograph, and a further snapshot of Andrew walking amiably with a notorious individual emerged.

• Self-importance: To what extent did his siblings, perhaps even his mother and father, realize that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Questionable Associations: They must have known, if his staff and the police were fulfilling their roles, that he had some deeply disreputable friends given he publicly welcomed them to palaces.
• Financial Extravagance: If the household did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his extravagance with state resources.

Journeys were listed in public records: chopper flights from the royal residence to a golf course and back again in time for lunch, chartered planes instead of regular transport, all for the comfort of "the travel enthusiast".

World of Deference

Furthermore the entitlement which demanded deference when he entered a space or the supreme awareness about his designations used on his letterheads in letters to his associates.

He avoided accountability while his mother, who inexplicably spoiled him, was still surviving. The sovereign did at least revoke him of royal responsibilities and honorary colonelcies in the consequence of his disastrous and, it is now clear, mendacious television interview six years ago.

Current Situation

It was only in the last fortnight that events sped up, following the publication of books giving more disturbing details of his behavior and that of his connections.

Additional revelations have again revealed Andrew's assumption that he could avoid lying about his interaction with a notorious figure.

People (and the media) were far ahead of the royals. There was not a single person of any importance to defend him, a result of all those years of arrogance.

Monarchical Concerns

The more astute family members realized that. The key objective is to transfer the monarchy, if not as previously at least complete and unstained.

For generations the last 190 years trying to overcome the legacy of past sovereigns, showing they are valuable, accountable and reactive to their people.

He was placing all that in danger in an era when submission and discretion is no longer enough.

Consequences

Ultimately, the famously indecisive king was pushed further. There was no alternative. The institution had lost control of the story.

Currently the loss of honorifics and the ongoing and permanent public humiliation that will hurt Andrew the most.

• Downgrading: Reduced to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Historical Precedent: The first royal to surrender his titles in recent history
• Military Service: Notably stinging given his duty in the Falklands war

He remains a royal advisor, in principle able to stand in for the sovereign, and he is still in the succession to the crown, but neither of these will actually come to pass.

Future Prospects

Do individuals he encounters still defer to him? Will they still slip up and call him Prince? Will they even say Andrew,

Of course, he is not retiring to an ordinary town, but to the sovereign's extensive property at a royal residence.

In that place, he will be provided by the sovereign with one of the royal residences and given some sort of financial support.

This is not his former home, where he paid a nominal lease for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit far, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Outstanding Concerns

The situation continues. There are still documents in the custody of American legislators to be disclosed.

• Parliamentary Interest: Might lawmakers demand more
• Monetary Probe: Or scrutinize the misuse of state resources
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a police investigation into his behavior

Maybe for the moment the harm to the monarchy to the monarchy is limited. The narrative from the palace was plainly that the removal of honorifics was what the king, and especially other senior family members, sought.

Changed Stance

No more pretence that Andrew was acting willingly. And, notably, the short statement showed plainly that the institution were supporting the victim's account of incidents.

Furthermore, for the initial instance they eventually showed regard for the survivors: "The measures are judged required, regardless of the reality that he persists in refuting the accusations against him."

Finally it is arrogance, selfishness and indolence that will destroy the crown. In his foolishness, self-indulgence and venality, Andrew seems never to have learned that lesson.