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

There stood the Earl of Inverness, with his arm around a teenage girl, while another individual smiled conspiratorially in the background.

Lacking that photograph, shot at a party in 2001, few would have credited the assertions of a teenager who stated she was moved across the ocean and obliged to have cursory relations with a individual of the royal family?

A strange, revealing gesture by someone who had publicly claimed to have not been aware of her, said he could no have had relations with her, and yet paid a large amount of family resources to resolve a long-delayed legal case.

Years of Scandal

Considering this, conversations of the royal family acting swiftly to distance themselves from Andrew are wide of the mark. This affair has continued for the largest portion of 15 years since that photograph, and an additional photo of Andrew walking pleasantly with a disgraced financier surfaced.

• Arrogance: For what duration did his brothers and sisters, maybe even his mother and father, realize that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have understood, if his employees and the police were doing their jobs, that he had some deeply disreputable friends given he unabashedly welcomed them to royal residences.
• Financial Extravagance: If the family did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his extravagance with state resources.

Journeys were listed in public records: chopper travel from the palace to a golf course and back again in time for lunch, chartered planes instead of commercial flights, all for the convenience of "the frequent flyer".

A Life of Privilege

Additionally the entitlement which required deference when he entered a space or the supreme obsession about his honorifics used on his letterheads in messages to his personal acquaintances.

He could get away with it while his mother, who strangely indulged him, was still living. The sovereign did at least remove him of public duties and honorary colonelcies in the wake of his catastrophic and, it is now clear, deceptive media appearance six years ago.

Latest Events

Just in the last 14 days that events sped up, following the release of books giving more troubling information of his actions and that of his companions.

More information have again revealed Andrew's belief that he could escape deceiving about his interaction with a convicted criminal.

Society (and the press) were far ahead of the monarchy. There was not a single person of any significance to defend him, a outcome of all those years of presumption.

Institutional Fears

The more intelligent family members recognized that. The one imperative is to transfer the institution, if not as heretofore at least whole and untarnished.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to overcome the image of past sovereigns, showing they are valuable, accountable and reactive to their citizens.

His actions endangered all that in peril in an era when submission and discretion is no longer enough.

Consequences

Ultimately, the well-known hesitant king was pressured further. There was no other option. The royal household had relinquished authority of the story.

Presently the loss of honorifics and the persistent and permanent public humiliation that will afflict Andrew most severely.

• Demotion: Demoted to just a private citizen
• Prior Instance: The primary royal to lose his titles in contemporary era
• Armed Forces: Notably stinging given his role in the conflict

He remains a royal advisor, theoretically able to stand in for the king, and he is still eighth in line to the monarchy, but neither of these will ever happen.

Future Prospects

Will people he meets still defer to him? Will they still forget themselves and call him Prince? Will they even say Andrew,

Naturally, he is not withdrawing to an ordinary town, but to the monarchy's large estate at a monarchical property.

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

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

Pending Matters

This is not over. There are still documents in the possession of overseas authorities to be revealed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Will parliament demand more
• Fiscal Review: Or scrutinize the misuse of taxpayer funds
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a police investigation into his conduct

Maybe for the present the harm to the monarchy to the crown is limited. The statement from the royal household was plainly that the removal of designations was what the king, and notably other senior monarchical figures, sought.

A Shift in Position

An end to deception that Andrew was acting willingly. And, notably, the short announcement showed clearly that the institution were siding with the accuser's account of occurrences.

Additionally, for the initial instance they finally showed consideration for the survivors: "These actions are judged required, regardless of the truth that he persists in refuting the claims against him."

In the end it is arrogance, self-interest and laziness that will undermine the institution. In his stupidity, personal excess and greed, Andrew seems never to have understood that lesson.