🔗 Share this article

This episode commenced with a isolated photograph, perhaps the most significant ever taken of a member of the monarchy.

There stood the Baron Killyleagh, with his arm around a young woman, while an associate beamed conspiratorially in the backdrop.

Absent that image, captured at a gathering in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the assertions of a teenager who stated she was moved across the sea and compelled to have brief relations with a prince of the royal bloodline?

An odd, revealing move by someone who had publicly claimed to have no known about her, claimed he could never have had relations with her, and yet provided a large amount of family funds to settle a drawn-out legal case.

Years of Controversy

In this context, discussions of the monarchy acting firmly to sever ties with Andrew are wide of the mark. This affair has endured for the largest portion of 15 years since that picture, and an additional snapshot of Andrew ambling amiably with a notorious individual surfaced.

• Arrogance: For what duration did his siblings, maybe even his mother and father, realize that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have understood, if his employees and the authorities were doing their jobs, that he had some deeply disreputable friends given he unabashedly invited them to royal residences.
• Fiscal Irresponsibility: If the monarchy did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with state resources.

Trips were documented in official documents: private aircraft flights from the palace to a sporting venue and back again in time for lunch, chartered planes instead of scheduled services, all for the convenience of "the travel enthusiast".

Existence of Entitlement

Additionally the presumption which expected deference when he entered a room or the extreme consciousness about his honorifics used on his official documents in communication to his friends.

He avoided accountability while his parent, who strangely pampered him, was still alive. The sovereign did at least strip him of public duties and ceremonial ranks in the aftermath of his disastrous and, we now know, untruthful public statement six years ago.

Latest Events

Merely in the last fortnight that events sped up, following the release of books giving more troubling particulars of his actions and that of his companions.

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

Society (and the journalists) were far in advance of the royal family. There was no one of any significance to defend him, a consequence of all those years of presumption.

Monarchical Concerns

The more intelligent family members recognized that. The primary concern is to hand down the crown, if not as heretofore at least whole and unstained.

Over time the last 190 years trying to reverse the legacy of past sovereigns, demonstrating they are valuable, responsible and reactive to their citizens.

His actions endangered all that in jeopardy in an time when deference and privacy is no longer enough.

Consequences

Eventually, the famously uncertain sovereign was pushed further. There was little choice. The palace had lost control of the narrative.

Presently the stripping of honorifics and the persistent and lifetime public humiliation that will pain Andrew most deeply.

• Downgrading: Demoted to just a commoner
• Historical Precedent: The first royal to forfeit his designations in contemporary era
• Naval Career: Notably painful given his service in the Falklands war

He remains a royal advisor, in principle able to act for the sovereign, and he is still eighth in line to the monarchy, but neither of these will ever occur.

What Lies Ahead

Will people he comes across still defer to him? Might they still slip up and call him Prince? Will they even say Mr,

Naturally, he is not withdrawing to suburbia, but to the monarchy's vast property at Sandringham.

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

This differs from his prior accommodation, where he paid a minimal payment for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit remote, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Unresolved Issues

This is not over. There are still documents in the possession of overseas authorities to be revealed.

• Political Pressure: Might legislators request additional information
• Monetary Probe: Or scrutinize the waste of state resources
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his behavior

Possibly for the moment the harm to the monarchy to the institution is restricted. The statement from the royal household was plainly that the stripping of honorifics was what the king, and notably other senior family members, desired.

Altered Approach

An end to deception that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, notably, the short announcement showed clearly that the royals were supporting the victim's account of occurrences.

Furthermore, for the initial instance they eventually showed consideration for the victims: "The censures are considered essential, despite the reality that he maintains his innocence of the claims against him."

Ultimately it is entitlement, self-interest and laziness that will kill the institution. In his folly, self-gratification and greed, Andrew appears never to have grasped that lesson.