🔗 Share this article

It all began with a isolated photograph, possibly the most impactful ever taken of a royal family member.

In the frame appeared the Earl of Inverness, with his arm around a female youth, while a companion smiled knowingly in the backdrop.

Absent that snapshot, taken at a party in 2001, who would have believed the allegations of a teenager who said she was trafficked across the Atlantic and obliged to have cursory relations with a member of the royal family?

A strange, indicative action by someone who had overtly claimed to have not heard of her, asserted he could never have had intimate contact with her, and yet handed over a substantial sum of family money to avert a long-delayed lawsuit.

Years of Disgrace

Against this backdrop, talk of the royal family acting swiftly to cut Andrew off are misguided. This affair has continued for the largest portion of 15 years since that image, and another snapshot of Andrew ambling pleasantly with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Arrogance: To what extent did his family members, possibly even his parents, realize that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Problematic Connections: They must have realized, if his employees and the police were doing their jobs, that he had some highly questionable companions given he publicly hosted them to royal residences.
• Financial Extravagance: If the family did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his extravagance with taxpayer funds.

Journeys were listed in royal annual reports: private aircraft transfers from the palace to a sporting venue and back again in time for midday meal, exclusive air travel instead of regular transport, all for the comfort of "the travel enthusiast".

Existence of Entitlement

Additionally the entitlement which expected subservience when he entered a room or the supreme obsession about his royal titles used on his correspondence in messages to his friends.

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

Recent Developments

Merely in the last 14 days that events sped up, following the publication of biographical works giving more grim particulars of his behavior and that of his associates.

Additional revelations have again exposed Andrew's thinking that he could avoid deceiving about his contact with a convicted criminal.

The public (and the press) were far ahead of the royal family. There was nobody of any importance to speak up for him, a consequence of all those years of arrogance.

Monarchical Concerns

The wiser family members realized that. The primary concern is to pass on the crown, if not as heretofore at least complete and untarnished.

Over time the last 190 years trying to undo the legacy of earlier rulers, proving they are beneficial, accountable and responsive to their people.

His actions endangered all that in jeopardy in an age when submission and privacy is no longer adequate.

The Fallout

Eventually, the notoriously hesitant monarch was pushed further. There was little choice. The institution had lost control of the narrative.

Currently the stripping of honorifics and the persistent and life-long public humiliation that will hurt Andrew most deeply.

• Reduction: Reduced to just a commoner
• Prior Instance: The initial monarch to forfeit his honorifics in recent history
• Armed Forces: Especially hurtful given his duty in the conflict

He remains a constitutional officer, theoretically able to stand in for the monarch, and he is still eighth in line to the crown, but not any of these will actually happen.

Coming Developments

Do individuals he comes across still show respect to him? Will they still forget themselves and call him Your Highness? Would they say Mr,

Certainly, he is not withdrawing to an ordinary town, but to the sovereign's large grounds at Sandringham.

In that place, he will be furnished by the monarch with one of the estate properties and given some type of personal stipend.

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

Pending Matters

Matters remain unresolved. There are still files in the hands of overseas authorities to be revealed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Could legislators demand more
• Monetary Probe: Or investigate the waste of public money
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a criminal probe into his actions

Maybe for the moment the reputational impact to the monarchy is restricted. The narrative from the royal household was clearly that the removal of titles was what the monarch, and especially other senior family members, desired.

Altered Approach

An end to deception that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, remarkably, the short communication showed evidently that the monarchy were supporting the complainant's version of occurrences.

Furthermore, for the first time they finally showed regard for the affected individuals: "These actions are judged required, regardless of the reality that he maintains his innocence of the accusations against him."

Finally it is entitlement, self-interest and inactivity that will destroy the monarchy. In his folly, self-indulgence and corruption, Andrew appears never to have understood that truth.