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The saga started with a single photograph, perhaps the most consequential ever taken of a royal family member.

There stood the Duke of York, arm-in-arm a female youth, while a companion beamed conspiratorially in the backdrop.

Without that image, captured at a gathering in 2001, few would have credited the claims of a teenager who said she was transported across the ocean and obliged to have cursory relations with a member of the monarchy?

A curious, telling gesture by someone who had openly asserted to have not been aware of her, claimed he could never have had sex with her, and yet paid millions of monarchical resources to avert a drawn-out lawsuit.

Years of Disgrace

In this context, conversations of the monarchy acting swiftly to distance themselves from Andrew are inaccurate. This scandal has persisted for the majority of 15 years since that picture, and an additional snapshot of Andrew strolling amiably with a notorious individual surfaced.

• Arrogance: For what duration did his family members, possibly even his relatives, realize that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Problematic Connections: They must have known, if his staff and the authorities were fulfilling their roles, that he had some extremely unsavory friends given he unabashedly welcomed them to estates.
• Fiscal Irresponsibility: If the family did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with state resources.

Trips were documented in public records: helicopter travel from the estate to a country club and back again in time for midday meal, private flights instead of commercial flights, all for the comfort of "Airmiles Andy".

World of Deference

Additionally the arrogance which required deference when he appeared in a space or the supreme awareness about his royal titles used on his official documents in messages to his friends.

He avoided accountability while his matriarch, who unaccountably spoiled him, was still living. The monarch did at least revoke him of royal responsibilities and honorary colonelcies in the aftermath of his ill-fated and, it is now clear, deceptive media appearance six years ago.

Recent Developments

Merely in the last fortnight that events accelerated, following the release of accounts giving more disturbing particulars of his actions and that of his companions.

Further disclosures have again highlighted Andrew's thinking that he could avoid deceiving about his relationship with a disgraced individual.

People (and the media) were far ahead of the royals. There was not a single person of any significance to support him, a consequence of all those years of presumption.

Monarchical Concerns

The more astute family members realized that. The primary concern is to pass on the monarchy, if not as before at least whole and untarnished.

For generations the last 190 years trying to overcome the reputation of earlier rulers, showing they are useful, accountable and reactive to their subjects.

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

Consequences

Finally, the well-known uncertain monarch was pressured more. There was no other option. The royal household had lost control of the narrative.

Now it is the removal of designations and the continued and life-long public humiliation that will afflict Andrew most severely.

• Demotion: Demoted to just a private citizen
• Historical Precedent: The primary royal to lose his designations in recent history
• Military Service: Especially hurtful given his role in the engagement

He is still a royal advisor, in principle able to substitute for the monarch, and he is still in the lineage to the throne, but neither of these will truly happen.

Coming Developments

Will people he meets still acknowledge him? Will they still make mistakes and call him Sir? Will they even say Sir,

Certainly, he is not withdrawing to a common area, but to the royal family's large property at Sandringham.

In that place, he will be furnished by the king with one of the estate properties and given some form of financial support.

It is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a token payment for more than 20 years, and Norfolk is a bit distant, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Pending Matters

Matters remain unresolved. There are still files in the hands of American legislators to be made public.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Could lawmakers demand more
• Monetary Probe: Or examine the misuse of state resources
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his actions

Maybe for the present the harm to the monarchy to the monarchy is limited. The message from the palace was evidently that the removal of titles was what the monarch, and especially other senior family members, desired.

Changed Stance

An end to pretence that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, significantly, the concise statement showed evidently that the royals were siding with the complainant's account of occurrences.

Furthermore, for the premiere occasion they finally showed regard for the survivors: "These actions are considered essential, notwithstanding the reality that he persists in refuting the allegations against him."

Ultimately it is arrogance, selfishness and laziness that will undermine the crown. In his folly, personal excess and venality, Andrew appears never to have understood that truth.