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The saga started with a isolated photograph, possibly the most impactful ever snapped of a royal family member.

Present was the Duke of York, with his arm around a female youth, while an associate grinned knowingly in the backdrop.

Lacking that snapshot, captured at a gathering in 2001, few would have credited the claims of a teenager who stated she was trafficked across the ocean and compelled to have cursory relations with a prince of the royal bloodline?

A strange, indicative move by someone who had publicly claimed to have no been aware of her, asserted he could no have had intimate contact with her, and yet provided millions of his mother's money to avert a long-delayed court action.

Over a Decade of Controversy

In this context, conversations of the royal family acting swiftly to sever ties with Andrew are misguided. This scandal has persisted for the majority of 15 years since that photograph, and a further photo of Andrew walking pleasantly with a disgraced financier surfaced.

• Self-importance: How long did his brothers and sisters, possibly even his relatives, know that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Questionable Associations: They must have known, if his employees and the law enforcement were doing their jobs, that he had some highly questionable companions given he publicly hosted them to estates.
• Financial Extravagance: If the family did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his extravagance with public money.

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

World of Deference

Additionally the entitlement which required subservience when he walked into a room or the profound consciousness about his honorifics used on his correspondence in communication to his friends.

He could get away with it while his matriarch, who inexplicably pampered him, was still living. The monarch did at least remove him of official roles and honorary colonelcies in the wake of his ill-fated and, as revealed, deceptive public statement six years ago.

Latest Events

Just in the last 14 days that events progressed rapidly, following the release of accounts giving more grim particulars of his behavior and that of his associates.

Further disclosures have again exposed Andrew's thinking that he could escape deceiving about his relationship with a convicted criminal.

People (and the media) were far in advance of the royals. There was not a single person of any importance to support him, a consequence of all those years of presumption.

Royal Worries

The more intelligent royals understood that. The primary concern is to transfer the monarchy, if not as heretofore at least complete and untarnished.

Over time the last 190 years trying to overcome the legacy of previous monarchs, showing they are valuable, dutiful and reactive to their people.

Andrew was putting all that in peril in an era when respect and privacy is no longer sufficient.

Aftermath

Eventually, the famously uncertain monarch was pressured more. There was little choice. The palace had relinquished authority of the narrative.

Now it is the loss of titles and the ongoing and lifetime public humiliation that will afflict Andrew most severely.

• Reduction: Demoted to just a commoner
• Prior Instance: The primary member to forfeit his titles in modern times
• Naval Career: Especially stinging given his duty in the engagement

He is still a counsellor of state, in principle able to stand in for the monarch, and he is still in the succession to the throne, but not any of these will truly come to pass.

Coming Developments

Will people he comes across still show respect to him? Will they still slip up and call him Your Highness? Will they even say Sir,

Of course, he is not retiring to an ordinary town, but to the sovereign's vast estate at Sandringham.

There, he will be provided by the king with one of the estate properties and given some sort of personal stipend.

This is not his former home, where he paid a token lease for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit far, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Outstanding Concerns

The situation continues. There are still records in the custody of overseas authorities to be revealed.

• Parliamentary Interest: Will parliament seek further action
• Monetary Probe: Or scrutinize the waste of public money
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a criminal probe into his conduct

Perhaps for the moment the institutional damage to the crown is restricted. The narrative from the institution was evidently that the revocation of honorifics was what the king, and especially other senior family members, desired.

A Shift in Position

An end to deception that Andrew was acting willingly. And, significantly, the concise announcement showed plainly that the royals were aligning with the accuser's version of incidents.

Additionally, for the initial instance they finally showed consideration for the victims: "The censures are deemed necessary, regardless of the fact that he persists in refuting the accusations against him."

Finally it is presumption, self-interest and laziness that will kill the crown. In his foolishness, self-gratification and greed, Andrew appears never to have grasped that truth.