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

There stood the Baron Killyleagh, arm-in-arm a teenage girl, while an associate smiled suggestively in the rear.

Without that photograph, captured at a social event in 2001, who would have believed the allegations of a teenager who stated she was trafficked across the ocean and compelled to have brief intimate contact with a prince of the royal family?

A curious, revealing move by someone who had publicly claimed to have no known about her, claimed he could not have had relations with her, and yet provided a large amount of monarchical resources to resolve a drawn-out lawsuit.

Years of Scandal

In this context, conversations of the monarchy acting firmly to cut Andrew off are inaccurate. This controversy has continued for the majority of 15 years since that photograph, and another snapshot of Andrew strolling congenially with a notorious individual surfaced.

• Self-importance: For what duration did his family members, possibly even his mother and father, understand that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Problematic Connections: They must have known, if his staff and the authorities were performing their duties, that he had some highly questionable associates given he openly hosted them to palaces.
• Fiscal Irresponsibility: If the household did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his extravagance with state resources.

Trips were listed in public records: private aircraft travel from the royal residence to a country club and back again in time for dining, private flights instead of commercial flights, all for the benefit of "Airmiles Andy".

Existence of Entitlement

Additionally the entitlement which expected respect when he appeared in a area or the supreme obsession about his honorifics used on his official documents in communication to his friends.

He managed to escape consequences while his parent, who unaccountably indulged him, was still living. The monarch did at least strip him of royal responsibilities and ceremonial ranks in the aftermath of his catastrophic and, it is now clear, deceptive television interview six years ago.

Recent Developments

It was only in the last two weeks that events sped up, following the publication of accounts giving more grim information of his actions and that of his companions.

Further disclosures have again revealed Andrew's assumption that he could escape deceiving about his contact with a disgraced individual.

Society (and the journalists) were far in advance of the royal family. There was not a single person of any importance to speak up for him, a consequence of all those years of hubris.

Royal Worries

The more astute royals understood that. The primary concern is to hand down the institution, if not as heretofore at least whole and unstained.

For generations the last 190 years trying to overcome the legacy of earlier rulers, proving they are useful, responsible and attentive to their citizens.

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

Aftermath

Ultimately, the well-known hesitant sovereign was pushed more. There was no other option. The royal household had surrendered command of the story.

Currently the removal of honorifics and the continued and lifetime social disgrace that will afflict Andrew the most.

• Downgrading: Lowered to just a commoner
• Prior Instance: The first royal to surrender his titles in contemporary era
• Military Service: Especially stinging given his duty in the conflict

He remains a counsellor of state, on paper able to act for the sovereign, and he is still in the succession to the crown, but neither of these will truly come to pass.

Coming Developments

Do individuals he comes across still defer to him? Might they still slip up and call him Sir? Might they say Andrew,

Certainly, he is not moving to suburbia, but to the royal family's vast property at a royal residence.

In that place, he will be furnished by the king with one of the royal residences and given some type of private allowance.

It is not his previous residence, where he paid a nominal rent for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit distant, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Unresolved Issues

This is not over. There are still files in the hands of American legislators to be made public.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Could parliament demand more
• Fiscal Review: Or scrutinize the improper use of taxpayer funds
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his actions

Perhaps for the present the reputational impact to the institution is restricted. The message from the institution was clearly that the removal of titles was what the king, and especially other senior family members, desired.

Altered Approach

An end to deception that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, remarkably, the brief communication showed evidently that the monarchy were aligning with the victim's version of incidents.

Furthermore, for the first time they ultimately showed regard for the affected individuals: "The measures are judged required, notwithstanding the truth that he persists in refuting the allegations against him."

Ultimately it is presumption, self-interest and laziness that will destroy the crown. In his folly, self-gratification and greed, Andrew gives the impression never to have learned that truth.