🔗 Share this article

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

In the frame appeared the Baron Killyleagh, with his arm around a young woman, while an associate beamed suggestively in the backdrop.

Without that photograph, captured at a social event in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the allegations of a teenager who declared she was transported across the ocean and obliged to have cursory sexual encounters with a prince of the royal family?

A strange, telling move by someone who had publicly asserted to have not been aware of her, asserted he could never have had relations with her, and yet paid a substantial sum of his mother's funds to resolve a protracted legal case.

Over a Decade of Controversy

Considering this, conversations of the royals acting firmly to distance themselves from Andrew are misguided. This scandal has endured for the largest portion of 15 years since that image, and another snapshot of Andrew strolling pleasantly with a convicted sex offender emerged.

• Hubris: To what extent did his brothers and sisters, possibly even his relatives, understand that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have known, if his aides and the police were fulfilling their roles, that he had some extremely unsavory friends given he publicly hosted them to estates.
• Fiscal Irresponsibility: If the monarchy did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his overspending with public money.

Trips were documented in royal annual reports: chopper transfers from the royal residence to a sporting venue and back again in time for midday meal, exclusive air travel instead of regular transport, all for the convenience of "the frequent flyer".

A Life of Privilege

Then there was the entitlement which expected subservience when he walked into a space or the extreme awareness about his royal titles used on his correspondence in letters to his personal acquaintances.

He avoided accountability while his matriarch, who strangely indulged him, was still living. The monarch did at least revoke him of royal responsibilities and honorary colonelcies in the consequence of his disastrous and, as revealed, untruthful television interview six years ago.

Current Situation

Just in the last fortnight that events progressed rapidly, following the release of biographical works giving more disturbing details of his behavior and that of his companions.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's belief that he could get away with deceiving about his interaction with a notorious figure.

The public (and the media) were far more perceptive of the royal family. There was nobody of any consequence to support him, a consequence of all those years of presumption.

Royal Worries

The more intelligent royals understood that. The one imperative is to hand down the crown, if not as before at least whole and unstained.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to reverse the reputation of earlier rulers, proving they are valuable, dutiful and attentive to their citizens.

Andrew was putting all that in peril in an age when submission and secrecy is no longer enough.

The Fallout

Ultimately, the well-known hesitant king was prodded additional. There was little choice. The palace had surrendered command of the story.

Presently the removal of titles and the persistent and lifetime public humiliation that will hurt Andrew most severely.

• Reduction: Reduced to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Past Example: The initial royal to forfeit his designations in recent history
• Armed Forces: Notably stinging given his role in the engagement

He is still a counsellor of state, theoretically able to stand in for the monarch, and he is still eighth in line to the crown, but none of these will actually occur.

Coming Developments

Do individuals he meets still defer to him? Might they still make mistakes and call him Your Highness? Would they say Sir,

Naturally, he is not withdrawing to suburbia, but to the monarchy's large estate at Sandringham.

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

This is not his previous residence, where he paid a minimal rent for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit distant, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Unresolved Issues

The situation continues. There are still documents in the possession of overseas authorities to be revealed.

• Political Pressure: Will parliament request additional information
• Monetary Probe: Or examine the waste of public money
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his actions

Maybe for the time being the institutional damage to the monarchy is restricted. The narrative from the royal household was plainly that the stripping of designations was what the monarch, and especially other senior monarchical figures, desired.

Altered Approach

The cessation of deception that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, remarkably, the short statement showed clearly that the royals were siding with the accuser's version of events.

Furthermore, for the initial instance they eventually showed consideration for the survivors: "The censures are considered essential, regardless of the fact that he continues to deny the accusations against him."

In the end it is entitlement, selfishness and inactivity that will kill the institution. In his stupidity, self-gratification and venality, Andrew gives the impression never to have grasped that truth.