🔗 Share this article

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

There stood the Duke of York, with his arm around a female youth, while an associate beamed conspiratorially in the backdrop.

Lacking that image, taken at a gathering in 2001, few would have credited the claims of a young woman who declared she was moved across the sea and obliged to have cursory sexual encounters with a member of the royal bloodline?

A strange, revealing move by someone who had openly claimed to have not been aware of her, asserted he could never have had intimate contact with her, and yet provided millions of family money to resolve a long-delayed lawsuit.

Over a Decade of Controversy

Considering this, talk of the royals acting swiftly to cut Andrew off are misguided. This scandal has continued for the majority of 15 years since that image, and another snapshot of Andrew walking pleasantly with a disgraced financier emerged.

• Hubris: To what extent did his family members, perhaps even his mother and father, realize that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Problematic Connections: They must have known, if his aides and the authorities were fulfilling their roles, that he had some deeply disreputable friends given he unabashedly invited them to palaces.
• Financial Extravagance: If the family did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with state resources.

Trips were printed in official documents: helicopter travel from the estate to a golf course and back again in time for midday meal, exclusive air travel instead of regular transport, all for the convenience of "the travel enthusiast".

Existence of Entitlement

Additionally the entitlement which required respect when he entered a area or the profound awareness about his royal titles used on his letterheads in communication to his personal acquaintances.

He could get away with it while his parent, who inexplicably pampered him, was still surviving. The sovereign did at least revoke him of public duties and honorary colonelcies in the aftermath of his disastrous and, as revealed, deceptive public statement six years ago.

Current Situation

Merely in the last fortnight that events progressed rapidly, following the release of biographical works giving more grim particulars of his behavior and that of his connections.

Further disclosures have again exposed Andrew's thinking that he could escape lying about his contact with a disgraced individual.

The public (and the press) were far more perceptive of the royals. There was no one of any significance to defend him, a result of all those years of hubris.

Institutional Fears

The wiser family members recognized that. The key objective is to hand down the institution, if not as previously at least whole and untarnished.

For generations the last 190 years trying to overcome the legacy of previous monarchs, showing they are useful, dutiful and responsive to their citizens.

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

The Fallout

Eventually, the notoriously hesitant monarch was pressured more. There was little choice. The institution had surrendered command of the account.

Currently the stripping of titles and the persistent and permanent public humiliation that will pain Andrew most deeply.

• Downgrading: Lowered to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Past Example: The primary monarch to lose his titles in contemporary era
• Armed Forces: Particularly stinging given his service in the conflict

He continues to be a royal advisor, on paper able to substitute for the sovereign, and he is still in the lineage to the throne, but not any of these will truly occur.

Future Prospects

Will people he encounters still defer to him? Might they still forget themselves and call him Your Highness? Would they say Sir,

Of course, he is not moving to an ordinary town, but to the sovereign's large grounds at a royal residence.

In that place, he will be supplied by the sovereign with one of the grace and favour houses and given some form of personal stipend.

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

Pending Matters

Matters remain unresolved. There are still files in the custody of US Congress to be revealed.

• Parliamentary Interest: Could legislators request additional information
• Monetary Probe: Or investigate the waste of taxpayer funds
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a criminal probe into his conduct

Maybe for the time being the harm to the monarchy to the institution is restricted. The message from the palace was clearly that the removal of designations was what the sovereign, and notably other senior monarchical figures, sought.

Altered Approach

An end to pretence that Andrew was acting willingly. And, significantly, the concise communication showed clearly that the royals were supporting the accuser's narrative of incidents.

Furthermore, for the initial instance they eventually showed consideration for the affected individuals: "These actions are considered essential, regardless of the fact that he persists in refuting the claims against him."

Ultimately it is arrogance, self-seeking and indolence that will destroy the monarchy. In his folly, personal excess and greed, Andrew appears never to have grasped that reality.