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

Present was the Earl of Inverness, arm-in-arm a female youth, while another individual grinned suggestively in the background.

Absent that snapshot, captured at a social event in 2001, few would have credited the claims of a adolescent who declared she was transported across the ocean and obliged to have cursory relations with a prince of the royal family?

A strange, revealing action by someone who had openly claimed to have never heard of her, asserted he could no have had relations with her, and yet paid a large amount of his mother's resources to avert a protracted court action.

Years of Controversy

In this context, talk of the monarchy acting firmly to distance themselves from Andrew are inaccurate. This controversy has persisted for the better part of 15 years since that image, and an additional image of Andrew strolling congenially with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Self-importance: How long did his siblings, perhaps even his parents, realize that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Problematic Connections: They must have known, if his staff and the police were fulfilling their roles, that he had some highly questionable associates given he openly invited them to estates.
• Financial Extravagance: If the monarchy did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with taxpayer funds.

Travel were printed in public records: helicopter travel from the estate to a sporting venue and back again in time for lunch, private flights instead of scheduled services, all for the comfort of "Airmiles Andy".

Existence of Entitlement

Then there was the presumption which expected respect when he appeared in a room or the supreme consciousness about his designations used on his letterheads in letters to his personal acquaintances.

He could get away with it while his parent, who unaccountably indulged him, was still surviving. The monarch did at least strip him of official roles and military positions in the consequence of his ill-fated and, as revealed, untruthful public statement six years ago.

Latest Events

It was only in the last 14 days that events sped up, following the release of accounts giving more troubling details of his behavior and that of his connections.

More information have again exposed Andrew's thinking that he could avoid lying about his contact with a notorious figure.

Society (and the media) were far in advance of the royals. There was not a single person of any consequence to speak up for him, a consequence of all those years of hubris.

Royal Worries

The wiser royals realized that. The key objective is to transfer the institution, if not as heretofore at least intact and untarnished.

For generations the last 190 years trying to reverse the reputation of earlier rulers, proving they are beneficial, accountable and reactive to their subjects.

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

The Fallout

Eventually, the notoriously hesitant sovereign was prodded additional. There was little choice. The institution had surrendered command of the story.

Presently the removal of honorifics and the continued and permanent personal shame that will hurt Andrew the most.

• Reduction: Lowered to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Prior Instance: The primary monarch to lose his titles in recent history
• Armed Forces: Notably painful given his service in the Falklands war

He remains a constitutional officer, in principle able to substitute for the sovereign, and he is still in the succession to the throne, but none of these will ever happen.

Future Prospects

Do individuals he meets still defer to him? Could they still forget themselves and call him Prince? Will they even say Sir,

Of course, he is not withdrawing to an ordinary town, but to the royal family's vast property at a royal residence.

At that location, he will be furnished by the monarch with one of the grace and favour houses and given some type of private allowance.

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

Pending Matters

The situation continues. There are still documents in the custody of US Congress to be made public.

• Political Pressure: Could legislators seek further action
• Financial Investigation: Or scrutinize the improper use of state resources
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a police investigation into his actions

Maybe for the present the harm to the monarchy to the institution is limited. The narrative from the palace was clearly that the stripping of titles was what the monarch, and notably other senior monarchical figures, desired.

Changed Stance

An end to deception that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, notably, the brief statement showed evidently that the institution were aligning with the victim's version of occurrences.

Even more, for the initial instance they eventually showed consideration for the victims: "The measures are considered essential, despite the fact that he persists in refuting the accusations against him."

Ultimately it is arrogance, selfishness and inactivity that will kill the monarchy. In his stupidity, self-indulgence and corruption, Andrew appears never to have understood that reality.