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This episode commenced with a single photograph, perhaps the most significant ever snapped of a individual from the royal household.

In the frame appeared the Baron Killyleagh, standing closely beside a young woman, while an associate grinned knowingly in the rear.

Lacking that photograph, captured at a party in 2001, who would have believed the assertions of a teenager who stated she was moved across the Atlantic and obliged to have brief intimate contact with a member of the royal family?

A curious, indicative move by someone who had publicly asserted to have no heard of her, asserted he could never have had intimate contact with her, and yet provided millions of family money to avert a drawn-out lawsuit.

Over a Decade of Disgrace

Considering this, conversations of the royal family acting decisively to cut Andrew off are inaccurate. This controversy has endured for the better part of 15 years since that photograph, and another snapshot of Andrew walking amiably with a disgraced financier came to light.

• Self-importance: To what extent did his family members, perhaps even his parents, realize that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Questionable Associations: They must have known, if his aides and the authorities were performing their duties, that he had some deeply disreputable companions given he publicly invited them to palaces.
• Financial Extravagance: If the household did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his extravagance with taxpayer funds.

Trips were listed in royal annual reports: private aircraft flights from the royal residence to a golf course and back again in time for lunch, exclusive air travel instead of regular transport, all for the comfort of "the travel enthusiast".

World of Deference

Additionally the presumption which expected deference when he walked into a area or the supreme consciousness about his designations used on his letterheads in letters to his personal acquaintances.

He avoided accountability while his matriarch, who inexplicably pampered him, was still surviving. The monarch did at least remove him of official roles and military positions in the consequence of his disastrous and, it is now clear, mendacious media appearance six years ago.

Latest Events

Merely in the last fortnight that events progressed rapidly, following the publication of accounts giving more troubling details of his behavior and that of his associates.

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

People (and the journalists) were far more perceptive of the monarchy. There was no one of any consequence to support him, a consequence of all those years of arrogance.

Royal Worries

The more intelligent royals realized that. The one imperative is to transfer the crown, if not as previously at least complete and unblemished.

For generations the last 190 years trying to reverse the image of past sovereigns, showing they are valuable, responsible and attentive to their subjects.

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

Consequences

Finally, the well-known indecisive sovereign was prodded additional. There was no alternative. The palace had relinquished authority of the story.

Now it is the stripping of titles and the ongoing and life-long public humiliation that will afflict Andrew most severely.

• Reduction: Reduced to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Past Example: The initial monarch to surrender his designations in recent history
• Armed Forces: Especially painful given his service in the conflict

He is still a counsellor of state, theoretically able to stand in for the king, and he is still eighth in line to the throne, but not any of these will ever come to pass.

Future Prospects

Can persons he meets still defer to him? Might they still make mistakes and call him Prince? Might they say Mr,

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

There, he will be furnished by the king with one of the estate properties and given some form of private allowance.

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

Outstanding Concerns

The situation continues. There are still files in the custody of overseas authorities to be disclosed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Will lawmakers demand more
• Financial Investigation: Or investigate the improper use of public money
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a police investigation into his behavior

Maybe for the present the reputational impact to the crown is restricted. The statement from the palace was plainly that the removal of designations was what the sovereign, and particularly other senior royals, sought.

Altered Approach

No more pretence that Andrew was acting willingly. And, notably, the short statement showed evidently that the royals were siding with the complainant's narrative of events.

Furthermore, for the first time they eventually showed concern for the survivors: "These actions are judged required, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the claims against him."

Finally it is presumption, selfishness and indolence that will undermine the crown. In his stupidity, self-indulgence and greed, Andrew seems never to have learned that lesson.