🔗 Share this article

It all began with a single photograph, possibly the most consequential ever snapped of a member of the monarchy.

Present was the Earl of Inverness, arm-in-arm a teenage girl, while an associate beamed suggestively in the backdrop.

Absent that image, taken at a gathering in 2001, few would have credited the claims of a young woman who said she was trafficked across the sea and compelled to have cursory relations with a member of the monarchy?

An odd, telling action by someone who had publicly asserted to have no been aware of her, claimed he could not have had sex with her, and yet provided millions of monarchical money to resolve a protracted legal case.

A Long Period of Scandal

In this context, conversations of the monarchy acting firmly to sever ties with Andrew are wide of the mark. This affair has persisted for the majority of 15 years since that picture, and an additional snapshot of Andrew ambling pleasantly with a disgraced financier came to light.

• Self-importance: To what extent did his family members, perhaps even his relatives, know that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have realized, if his employees and the police were doing their jobs, that he had some highly questionable friends given he publicly hosted them to estates.
• Financial Extravagance: If the household did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with taxpayer funds.

Trips were documented in royal annual reports: helicopter travel from the estate to a country club and back again in time for lunch, private flights instead of commercial flights, all for the comfort of "the travel enthusiast".

Existence of Entitlement

Additionally the arrogance which required subservience when he entered a area or the supreme consciousness about his designations used on his letterheads in messages to his associates.

He could get away with it while his parent, who inexplicably indulged him, was still living. The monarch did at least remove him of public duties and honorary colonelcies in the wake of his catastrophic and, it is now clear, deceptive media appearance six years ago.

Current Situation

Merely in the last two weeks that events accelerated, following the publication of books giving more grim information of his conduct and that of his companions.

More information have again exposed Andrew's thinking that he could escape being untruthful about his interaction with a disgraced individual.

Society (and the press) were far ahead of the monarchy. There was no one of any consequence to support him, a result of all those years of presumption.

Royal Worries

The more astute monarchical figures realized that. The key objective is to hand down the crown, if not as heretofore at least intact and untarnished.

Over time the last 190 years trying to reverse the legacy of earlier rulers, showing they are beneficial, dutiful and responsive to their people.

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

Consequences

Ultimately, the well-known uncertain king was prodded additional. There was no alternative. The palace had relinquished authority of the narrative.

Now it is the removal of honorifics and the continued and lifetime social disgrace that will pain Andrew the most.

• Reduction: Lowered to just a commoner
• Past Example: The initial member to lose his titles in modern times
• Naval Career: Particularly painful given his duty in the conflict

He remains a counsellor of state, on paper able to stand in for the sovereign, and he is still in the succession to the monarchy, but neither of these will ever occur.

Future Prospects

Can persons he encounters still show respect to him? Will they still forget themselves and call him Your Highness? Might they say Andrew,

Certainly, he is not moving to an ordinary town, but to the sovereign's vast property at a monarchical property.

At that location, he will be furnished by the sovereign with one of the grace and favour houses and given some form of private allowance.

It is not his former home, where he paid a token payment for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit distant, but even so it may not be adequate distance.

Outstanding Concerns

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

• Political Pressure: Will legislators seek further action
• Fiscal Review: Or investigate the waste of taxpayer funds
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a police investigation into his conduct

Possibly for the present the harm to the monarchy to the crown is restricted. The message from the royal household was clearly that the removal of titles was what the monarch, and particularly other senior family members, wanted.

A Shift in Position

The cessation of deception that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, remarkably, the brief communication showed plainly that the institution were supporting the accuser's narrative of occurrences.

Additionally, for the initial instance they eventually showed regard for the victims: "The censures are judged required, notwithstanding the fact that he persists in refuting the allegations against him."

Finally it is arrogance, self-interest and inactivity that will kill the crown. In his foolishness, self-indulgence and venality, Andrew appears never to have understood that lesson.