🔗 Share this article

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

There stood the Earl of Inverness, standing closely beside a young woman, while another individual grinned suggestively in the rear.

Lacking that snapshot, captured at a social event in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the claims of a teenager who said she was transported across the Atlantic and obliged to have perfunctory relations with a individual of the royal bloodline?

A strange, revealing move by someone who had overtly asserted to have never known about her, claimed he could never have had intimate contact with her, and yet paid millions of monarchical money to resolve a long-delayed legal case.

A Long Period of Controversy

In this context, discussions of the monarchy acting decisively to sever ties with Andrew are inaccurate. This controversy has persisted for the better part of 15 years since that image, and an additional photo of Andrew strolling congenially with a disgraced financier surfaced.

• Hubris: How long did his family members, maybe even his relatives, realize that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Problematic Connections: They must have realized, if his employees and the authorities were fulfilling their roles, that he had some extremely unsavory associates given he unabashedly welcomed them to palaces.
• Financial Extravagance: If the monarchy did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his extravagance with state resources.

Journeys were documented in royal annual reports: helicopter flights from the estate to a country club and back again in time for lunch, chartered planes instead of regular transport, all for the comfort of "Airmiles Andy".

Existence of Entitlement

Additionally the presumption which demanded subservience when he walked into a space or the supreme awareness about his royal titles used on his correspondence in communication to his personal acquaintances.

He avoided accountability while his parent, who inexplicably pampered him, was still living. The monarch did at least strip him of royal responsibilities and military positions in the wake of his catastrophic and, it is now clear, untruthful media appearance six years ago.

Latest Events

Merely in the last 14 days that events accelerated, following the release of accounts giving more grim information of his actions and that of his connections.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's belief that he could escape deceiving about his interaction with a notorious figure.

People (and the journalists) were far in advance of the royals. There was no one of any importance to support him, a result of all those years of hubris.

Monarchical Concerns

The more intelligent monarchical figures recognized that. The primary concern is to pass on the crown, if not as previously at least whole and unstained.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to reverse the reputation of previous monarchs, demonstrating they are valuable, responsible and responsive to their people.

He was placing all that in jeopardy in an age when respect and privacy is no longer adequate.

Consequences

Eventually, the well-known uncertain monarch was pressured more. There was no other option. The institution had relinquished authority of the story.

Now it is the loss of titles and the continued and life-long personal shame that will afflict Andrew most severely.

• Demotion: Reduced to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Historical Precedent: The initial royal to surrender his titles in recent history
• Military Service: Especially hurtful given his role in the Falklands war

He is still a constitutional officer, on paper able to stand in for the monarch, and he is still eighth in line to the monarchy, but not any of these will truly happen.

Future Prospects

Do individuals he comes across still defer to him? Might they still forget themselves and call him Sir? Would they say Mr,

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

There, he will be furnished by the king with one of the royal residences and given some sort of private allowance.

This is not his former home, where he paid a nominal payment for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit remote, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Outstanding Concerns

Matters remain unresolved. There are still records in the custody of American legislators to be revealed.

• Parliamentary Interest: Could parliament request additional information
• Fiscal Review: Or investigate the waste of public money
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a police investigation into his behavior

Perhaps for the present the reputational impact to the institution is limited. The narrative from the royal household was evidently that the revocation of honorifics was what the sovereign, and especially other senior monarchical figures, wanted.

Changed Stance

The cessation of illusion that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, significantly, the short announcement showed evidently that the monarchy were siding with the complainant's version of events.

Additionally, for the premiere occasion they ultimately showed consideration for the survivors: "These actions are judged required, despite the truth that he maintains his innocence of the claims against him."

In the end it is presumption, selfishness and inactivity that will destroy the monarchy. In his foolishness, self-gratification and greed, Andrew seems never to have learned that reality.