🔗 Share this article

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

There stood the Baron Killyleagh, standing closely beside a teenage girl, while an associate grinned suggestively in the rear.

Lacking that photograph, taken at a social event in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the allegations of a adolescent who said she was trafficked across the ocean and forced to have cursory intimate contact with a member of the royal bloodline?

A curious, revealing gesture by someone who had openly asserted to have never known about her, asserted he could not have had relations with her, and yet handed over millions of family funds to avert a protracted legal case.

Over a Decade of Controversy

Against this backdrop, talk of the monarchy acting decisively to sever ties with Andrew are misguided. This scandal has continued for the largest portion of 15 years since that picture, and a further photo of Andrew walking pleasantly with a disgraced financier emerged.

• Hubris: For what duration did his family members, perhaps even his parents, know that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have understood, if his aides and the police were performing their duties, that he had some extremely unsavory companions given he openly invited them to palaces.
• Monetary Excess: If the monarchy did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with state resources.

Trips were printed in public records: private aircraft travel from the estate to a country club and back again in time for midday meal, chartered planes instead of commercial flights, all for the convenience of "the travel enthusiast".

A Life of Privilege

Additionally the presumption which demanded subservience when he appeared in a area or the supreme obsession about his honorifics used on his correspondence in communication to his personal acquaintances.

He avoided accountability while his matriarch, who unaccountably spoiled him, was still surviving. The monarch did at least remove him of royal responsibilities and ceremonial ranks in the aftermath of his disastrous and, it is now clear, mendacious television interview six years ago.

Current Situation

It was only in the last 14 days that events progressed rapidly, following the issuance of books giving more troubling particulars of his conduct and that of his associates.

Further disclosures have again revealed Andrew's thinking that he could get away with deceiving about his contact with a convicted criminal.

The public (and the press) were far in advance of the monarchy. There was no one of any significance to speak up for him, a result of all those years of presumption.

Royal Worries

The more intelligent family members understood that. The one imperative is to transfer the institution, if not as previously at least intact and unstained.

Over time the last 190 years trying to overcome the reputation of previous monarchs, showing they are useful, dutiful and responsive to their people.

Andrew was putting all that in peril in an time when respect and discretion is no longer enough.

The Fallout

Eventually, the famously indecisive king was pressured more. There was no other option. The palace had surrendered command of the account.

Currently the loss of designations and the continued and life-long public humiliation that will hurt Andrew the most.

• Reduction: Reduced to just a private citizen
• Prior Instance: The initial monarch to forfeit his honorifics in contemporary era
• Armed Forces: Especially stinging given his service in the engagement

He remains a royal advisor, theoretically able to act for the monarch, and he is still in the lineage to the throne, but none of these will actually occur.

Future Prospects

Do individuals he encounters still defer to him? Could they still make mistakes and call him Prince? Would they say Andrew,

Naturally, he is not withdrawing to suburbia, but to the sovereign's vast grounds at Sandringham.

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

This is not his former home, where he paid a token payment for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit far, but even so it may not be far enough.

Pending Matters

The situation continues. There are still files in the custody of overseas authorities to be made public.

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

Maybe for the present the institutional damage to the crown is limited. The message from the palace was plainly that the removal of designations was what the king, and particularly other senior family members, wanted.

Altered Approach

The cessation of illusion that Andrew was acting willingly. And, notably, the brief communication showed clearly that the royals were aligning with the victim's account of occurrences.

Furthermore, for the first time they ultimately showed concern for the affected individuals: "The censures are judged required, despite the reality that he persists in refuting the claims against him."

Finally it is presumption, self-interest and laziness that will destroy the institution. In his stupidity, personal excess and corruption, Andrew seems never to have understood that lesson.