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It all began with a solitary photograph, perhaps the most significant ever captured of a individual from the royal household.

There stood the Earl of Inverness, with his arm around a female youth, while a companion grinned conspiratorially in the rear.

Without that snapshot, taken at a party in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the claims of a adolescent who said she was trafficked across the Atlantic and forced to have perfunctory sexual encounters with a individual of the monarchy?

A strange, revealing action by someone who had publicly stated to have not been aware of her, asserted he could never have had intimate contact with her, and yet handed over a substantial sum of family resources to avert a protracted legal case.

A Long Period of Disgrace

Considering this, talk of the royal family acting firmly to distance themselves from Andrew are inaccurate. This controversy has endured for the majority of 15 years since that photograph, and a further photo of Andrew ambling congenially with a disgraced financier surfaced.

• Hubris: To what extent did his family members, possibly even his relatives, realize that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have known, if his staff and the law enforcement were doing their jobs, that he had some extremely unsavory associates given he openly welcomed them to estates.
• Financial Extravagance: If the monarchy did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his overspending with state resources.

Trips were documented in public records: helicopter flights from the palace to a golf course and back again in time for midday meal, private flights instead of scheduled services, all for the convenience of "Airmiles Andy".

Existence of Entitlement

Additionally the presumption which expected deference when he appeared in a space or the supreme awareness about his honorifics used on his official documents in letters to his friends.

He could get away with it while his mother, who inexplicably indulged him, was still surviving. The monarch did at least strip him of official roles and military positions in the aftermath of his disastrous and, it is now clear, mendacious public statement six years ago.

Recent Developments

Just in the last two weeks that events progressed rapidly, following the release of accounts giving more disturbing details of his behavior and that of his companions.

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

Society (and the media) were far ahead of the monarchy. There was nobody of any consequence to support him, a outcome of all those years of arrogance.

Royal Worries

The more astute monarchical figures realized that. The primary concern is to hand down the crown, if not as previously at least intact and unblemished.

For generations the last 190 years trying to reverse the image of previous monarchs, showing they are valuable, dutiful and reactive to their subjects.

Andrew was putting all that in danger in an age when submission and discretion is no longer adequate.

Consequences

Finally, the famously hesitant monarch was prodded additional. There was little choice. The institution had relinquished authority of the account.

Now it is the removal of designations and the persistent and lifetime personal shame that will afflict Andrew the most.

• Reduction: Reduced to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Past Example: The initial monarch to lose his designations in contemporary era
• Military Service: Especially stinging given his service in the Falklands war

He remains a counsellor of state, theoretically able to substitute for the monarch, and he is still in the succession to the monarchy, but neither of these will actually come to pass.

Future Prospects

Can persons he comes across still defer to him? Will they still make mistakes and call him Sir? Might they say Mr,

Naturally, he is not withdrawing to an ordinary town, but to the royal family's vast grounds at a monarchical property.

There, he will be provided by the monarch with one of the grace and favour houses and given some form of financial support.

This differs from his prior accommodation, where he paid a token payment for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit distant, but even so it may not be far enough.

Outstanding Concerns

Matters remain unresolved. There are still files in the possession of US Congress to be disclosed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Will legislators request additional information
• Fiscal Review: Or scrutinize the improper use of state resources
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a police investigation into his conduct

Perhaps for the present the reputational impact to the monarchy is restricted. The narrative from the institution was clearly that the stripping of designations was what the sovereign, and particularly other senior royals, sought.

Changed Stance

The cessation of illusion that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, significantly, the concise communication showed plainly that the royals were aligning with the victim's account of events.

Even more, for the first time they eventually showed concern for the affected individuals: "The censures are judged required, regardless of the reality that he persists in refuting the claims against him."

Finally it is arrogance, selfishness and indolence that will destroy the crown. In his stupidity, personal excess and venality, Andrew seems never to have grasped that reality.