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The saga started with a single photograph, perhaps the most impactful ever taken of a member of the monarchy.

There stood the Duke of York, arm-in-arm a teenage girl, while another individual grinned suggestively in the background.

Absent that photograph, captured at a social event in 2001, few would have credited the allegations of a teenager who declared she was moved across the ocean and forced to have brief intimate contact with a member of the royal family?

A curious, revealing move by someone who had publicly stated to have no known about her, asserted he could not have had sex with her, and yet provided millions of family resources to settle a long-delayed legal case.

A Long Period of Controversy

In this context, conversations of the monarchy acting decisively to sever ties with Andrew are misguided. This scandal has persisted for the better part of 15 years since that image, and another image of Andrew ambling amiably with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Arrogance: For what duration did his brothers and sisters, maybe even his parents, realize that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Questionable Associations: They must have known, if his staff and the authorities were doing their jobs, that he had some extremely unsavory companions given he publicly hosted them to palaces.
• Fiscal Irresponsibility: If the household did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his extravagance with taxpayer funds.

Trips were documented in royal annual reports: helicopter flights from the palace to a golf course and back again in time for midday meal, chartered planes instead of commercial flights, all for the comfort of "Airmiles Andy".

Existence of Entitlement

Additionally the presumption which required respect when he walked into a room or the profound obsession about his honorifics used on his official documents in messages to his associates.

He avoided accountability while his parent, who unaccountably indulged him, was still living. The Queen did at least strip him of official roles and military positions in the wake of his ill-fated and, as revealed, mendacious television interview six years ago.

Recent Developments

Merely in the last fortnight that events progressed rapidly, following the release of accounts giving more disturbing details of his actions and that of his connections.

More information have again revealed Andrew's assumption that he could escape lying about his interaction with a notorious figure.

Society (and the media) were far in advance of the monarchy. There was no one of any importance to support him, a outcome of all those years of hubris.

Monarchical Concerns

The wiser royals understood that. The key objective is to pass on the monarchy, if not as previously at least whole and untarnished.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to overcome the image of earlier rulers, demonstrating they are useful, accountable and attentive to their subjects.

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

The Fallout

Eventually, the famously uncertain monarch was prodded more. There was no other option. The palace had lost control of the story.

Now it is the removal of honorifics and the persistent and life-long social disgrace that will afflict Andrew the most.

• Downgrading: Demoted to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Past Example: The initial monarch to forfeit his honorifics in recent history
• Naval Career: Notably hurtful given his duty in the Falklands war

He continues to be a constitutional officer, in principle able to stand in for the sovereign, and he is still in the succession to the crown, but not any of these will actually occur.

Coming Developments

Do individuals he meets still defer to him? Might they still slip up and call him Your Highness? Might they say Mr,

Certainly, he is not moving to a common area, but to the royal family's large estate at a royal residence.

At that location, he will be furnished by the king with one of the royal residences and given some sort of personal stipend.

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

Unresolved Issues

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

• Political Pressure: Might legislators demand more
• Monetary Probe: Or investigate the waste of state resources
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his conduct

Possibly for the moment the institutional damage to the crown is restricted. The narrative from the institution was plainly that the stripping of honorifics was what the monarch, and notably other senior family members, wanted.

Altered Approach

The cessation of illusion that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, notably, the concise statement showed evidently that the monarchy were supporting the victim's narrative of events.

Additionally, for the premiere occasion they finally showed concern for the survivors: "The censures are considered essential, despite the truth that he persists in refuting the accusations against him."

Ultimately it is entitlement, self-seeking and laziness that will kill the institution. In his folly, self-gratification and greed, Andrew seems never to have understood that truth.