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The saga started with a single photograph, arguably the most impactful ever captured of a member of the monarchy.

Present was the Earl of Inverness, arm-in-arm a teenage girl, while another individual beamed suggestively in the background.

Lacking that snapshot, taken at a party in 2001, few would have credited the assertions of a adolescent who declared she was transported across the sea and compelled to have perfunctory sexual encounters with a member of the royal bloodline?

A curious, indicative move by someone who had overtly asserted to have never heard of her, asserted he could not have had intimate contact with her, and yet handed over millions of monarchical funds to resolve a long-delayed legal case.

Over a Decade of Controversy

Considering this, conversations of the royals acting firmly to distance themselves from Andrew are misguided. This controversy has continued for the largest portion of 15 years since that image, and another image of Andrew ambling pleasantly with a disgraced financier emerged.

• Self-importance: For what duration did his brothers and sisters, maybe even his relatives, realize that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have realized, if his aides and the police were performing their duties, that he had some deeply disreputable companions given he openly hosted them to palaces.
• Monetary Excess: If the family did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his extravagance with state resources.

Journeys were documented in public records: helicopter flights from the palace to a sporting venue and back again in time for lunch, chartered planes instead of scheduled services, all for the benefit of "the frequent flyer".

Existence of Entitlement

Then there was the arrogance which demanded deference when he entered a area or the supreme obsession about his honorifics used on his letterheads in messages to his friends.

He could get away with it while his mother, who unaccountably spoiled him, was still surviving. The sovereign did at least remove him of royal responsibilities and military positions in the wake of his catastrophic and, it is now clear, deceptive media appearance six years ago.

Latest Events

Merely in the last two weeks that events sped up, following the issuance of accounts giving more disturbing details of his actions and that of his associates.

Further disclosures have again exposed Andrew's thinking that he could get away with being untruthful about his contact with a disgraced individual.

Society (and the press) were far in advance of the royals. There was not a single person of any importance to support him, a outcome of all those years of hubris.

Monarchical Concerns

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

They have spent the last 190 years trying to overcome the image of earlier rulers, demonstrating they are valuable, responsible and responsive to their people.

His actions endangered all that in peril in an age when submission and secrecy is no longer sufficient.

The Fallout

Finally, the well-known hesitant king was pressured more. There was no alternative. The palace had lost control of the account.

Now it is the loss of titles and the continued and life-long public humiliation that will pain Andrew most severely.

• Reduction: Demoted to just a private citizen
• Prior Instance: The primary royal to surrender his honorifics in recent history
• Military Service: Particularly stinging given his role in the Falklands war

He continues to be a royal advisor, theoretically able to substitute for the sovereign, and he is still in the lineage to the crown, but neither of these will ever come to pass.

Future Prospects

Do individuals he comes across still show respect to him? Will they still slip up and call him Your Highness? Will they even say Mr,

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

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

This is not his prior accommodation, 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 adequate distance.

Outstanding Concerns

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

• Governmental Scrutiny: Could parliament request additional information
• Financial Investigation: Or scrutinize the misuse of taxpayer funds
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a criminal probe into his conduct

Possibly for the moment the institutional damage to the crown is restricted. The statement from the institution was clearly that the revocation of honorifics was what the monarch, and notably other senior royals, sought.

Altered Approach

The cessation of deception that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, remarkably, the concise statement showed clearly that the monarchy were aligning with the victim's account of incidents.

Furthermore, for the first time they ultimately showed regard for the survivors: "The censures are deemed necessary, regardless of the truth that he continues to deny the allegations against him."

Finally it is entitlement, self-interest and inactivity that will undermine the institution. In his stupidity, self-gratification and corruption, Andrew appears never to have understood that reality.