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It all began with a solitary photograph, possibly the most significant ever snapped of a royal family member.

There stood the Duke of York, standing closely beside a young woman, while an associate beamed knowingly in the rear.

Lacking that image, shot at a gathering in 2001, few would have credited the claims of a adolescent who stated she was transported across the sea and compelled to have cursory sexual encounters with a prince of the royal bloodline?

An odd, revealing gesture by someone who had overtly stated to have never been aware of her, claimed he could not have had relations with her, and yet paid millions of family resources to settle a protracted lawsuit.

A Long Period of Disgrace

Against this backdrop, discussions of the royals acting swiftly to distance themselves from Andrew are misguided. This controversy has endured for the better part of 15 years since that image, and a further snapshot of Andrew ambling amiably with a notorious individual surfaced.

• Self-importance: For what duration did his brothers and sisters, maybe even his relatives, know that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have realized, if his aides and the police were performing their duties, that he had some deeply disreputable associates given he unabashedly invited them to palaces.
• Financial Extravagance: If the family did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his extravagance with taxpayer funds.

Journeys were printed in official documents: helicopter travel from the palace to a sporting venue and back again in time for midday meal, chartered planes instead of commercial flights, all for the comfort of "the frequent flyer".

A Life of Privilege

Additionally the entitlement which required subservience when he walked into a space or the profound obsession about his royal titles used on his correspondence in messages to his personal acquaintances.

He avoided accountability while his parent, who inexplicably pampered him, was still surviving. The Queen did at least strip him of public duties and honorary colonelcies in the wake of his ill-fated and, it is now clear, deceptive public statement six years ago.

Current Situation

Merely in the last two weeks that events progressed rapidly, following the release of biographical works giving more grim information of his behavior and that of his associates.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's thinking that he could escape deceiving about his relationship with a disgraced individual.

People (and the press) were far in advance of the royal family. There was no one of any significance to speak up for him, a consequence of all those years of presumption.

Royal Worries

The more astute monarchical figures understood that. The one imperative is to pass on the institution, if not as previously at least complete and unblemished.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to undo the image of earlier rulers, showing they are useful, dutiful and responsive to their subjects.

Andrew was putting all that in jeopardy in an era when deference and secrecy is no longer enough.

Aftermath

Eventually, the notoriously hesitant monarch was prodded additional. There was no other option. The royal household had lost control of the account.

Currently the removal of honorifics and the continued and permanent personal shame that will afflict Andrew the most.

• Reduction: Reduced to just a private citizen
• Prior Instance: The initial monarch to surrender his titles in modern times
• Military Service: Notably painful given his role in the conflict

He is still a constitutional officer, theoretically able to substitute for the sovereign, and he is still in the lineage to the crown, but none of these will truly happen.

Coming Developments

Do individuals he comes across still defer to him? Might they still forget themselves and call him Prince? Will they even say Andrew,

Of course, he is not moving to an ordinary town, but to the royal family's vast property at Sandringham.

In that place, he will be supplied by the monarch with one of the royal residences and given some type of personal stipend.

This is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a nominal rent for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit distant, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Outstanding Concerns

The situation continues. There are still files in the possession of American legislators to be disclosed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Might parliament demand more
• Monetary Probe: Or investigate the misuse of public money
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his actions

Possibly for the time being the harm to the monarchy to the crown is contained. The narrative from the institution was plainly that the revocation of honorifics was what the king, and especially other senior monarchical figures, desired.

A Shift in Position

An end to pretence that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, significantly, the short announcement showed plainly that the monarchy were aligning with the complainant's account of events.

Additionally, for the initial instance they ultimately showed consideration for the affected individuals: "The censures are deemed necessary, regardless of the fact that he persists in refuting the accusations against him."

In the end it is entitlement, self-interest and laziness that will destroy the institution. In his folly, self-gratification and venality, Andrew seems never to have understood that lesson.