🔗 Share this article

The saga started with a single photograph, perhaps the most consequential ever snapped of a royal family member.

Present was the Baron Killyleagh, with his arm around a female youth, while another individual grinned suggestively in the rear.

Without that snapshot, captured at a social event in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the assertions of a adolescent who said she was moved across the Atlantic and obliged to have cursory sexual encounters with a prince of the monarchy?

A strange, revealing gesture by someone who had openly stated to have no heard of her, asserted he could never have had sex with her, and yet paid a large amount of family money to settle a protracted court action.

Over a Decade of Scandal

Against this backdrop, discussions of the royals acting firmly to sever ties with Andrew are wide of the mark. This scandal has persisted for the majority of 15 years since that photograph, and another photo of Andrew strolling amiably with a notorious individual came to light.

• Self-importance: To what extent did his family members, perhaps even his relatives, understand that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Problematic Connections: They must have understood, if his employees and the law enforcement were doing their jobs, that he had some deeply disreputable friends given he openly welcomed them to palaces.
• Financial Extravagance: If the monarchy did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his extravagance with state resources.

Journeys were printed in public records: private aircraft flights from the estate to a country club and back again in time for lunch, exclusive air travel instead of regular transport, all for the convenience of "Airmiles Andy".

Existence of Entitlement

Furthermore the entitlement which required deference when he walked into a area or the supreme obsession about his honorifics used on his official documents in messages to his associates.

He could get away with it while his mother, who inexplicably indulged him, was still living. The monarch did at least strip him of official roles and honorary colonelcies in the aftermath of his disastrous and, we now know, mendacious television interview six years ago.

Recent Developments

Just in the last 14 days that events progressed rapidly, following the publication of biographical works giving more troubling information of his actions and that of his associates.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's thinking that he could avoid being untruthful about his interaction with a notorious figure.

People (and the journalists) were far more perceptive of the royal family. There was nobody of any importance to speak up for him, a consequence of all those years of hubris.

Institutional Fears

The wiser monarchical figures understood that. The key objective is to pass on the crown, if not as previously at least intact and unblemished.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to reverse the reputation of earlier rulers, demonstrating they are beneficial, accountable and responsive to their subjects.

His actions endangered all that in jeopardy in an era when submission and secrecy is no longer adequate.

Consequences

Ultimately, the notoriously indecisive sovereign was prodded more. There was little choice. The palace had relinquished authority of the account.

Now it is the stripping of honorifics and the persistent and lifetime public humiliation that will hurt Andrew most severely.

• Downgrading: Reduced to just a private citizen
• Past Example: The initial royal to lose his honorifics in modern times
• Armed Forces: Notably hurtful given his role in the Falklands war

He remains a counsellor of state, theoretically able to substitute for the sovereign, and he is still eighth in line to the crown, but none of these will truly come to pass.

Future Prospects

Can persons he comes across still defer to him? Will they still forget themselves and call him Prince? Might they say Sir,

Of course, he is not moving to an ordinary town, but to the monarchy's large estate at Sandringham.

In that place, he will be provided by the monarch with one of the estate properties and given some form of private allowance.

It is not his previous residence, where he paid a token lease for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit far, but even so it may not be far enough.

Outstanding Concerns

The situation continues. There are still files in the hands of US Congress to be disclosed.

• Political Pressure: Will lawmakers request additional information
• Monetary Probe: Or investigate the misuse of state resources
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a criminal probe into his actions

Perhaps for the present the harm to the monarchy to the crown is limited. The statement from the palace was plainly that the removal of titles was what the sovereign, and notably other senior monarchical figures, wanted.

Changed Stance

No more pretence that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, notably, the brief communication showed evidently that the institution were aligning with the victim's account of occurrences.

Even more, for the first time they finally showed consideration for the affected individuals: "The measures are considered essential, despite the fact that he continues to deny the claims against him."

Ultimately it is presumption, self-seeking and inactivity that will kill the crown. In his stupidity, self-indulgence and greed, Andrew appears never to have understood that truth.