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It all began with a solitary photograph, perhaps the most significant ever taken of a member of the monarchy.

In the frame appeared the Earl of Inverness, with his arm around a young woman, while an associate beamed suggestively in the rear.

Lacking that image, shot at a party in 2001, who would have believed the allegations of a adolescent who said she was moved across the Atlantic and obliged to have cursory intimate contact with a individual of the royal family?

A strange, indicative action by someone who had overtly claimed to have never been aware of her, claimed he could no have had intimate contact with her, and yet provided a large amount of his mother's resources to resolve a drawn-out court action.

Over a Decade of Scandal

Considering this, discussions of the monarchy acting firmly to cut Andrew off are wide of the mark. This affair has endured for the largest portion of 15 years since that image, and a further image of Andrew ambling amiably with a notorious individual surfaced.

• Arrogance: For what duration did his siblings, maybe even his relatives, understand that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have understood, if his staff and the law enforcement were fulfilling their roles, that he had some highly questionable associates given he openly welcomed them to royal residences.
• Monetary Excess: If the monarchy did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his overspending with public money.

Travel were printed in royal annual reports: chopper travel from the estate to a golf course and back again in time for lunch, chartered planes instead of regular transport, all for the benefit of "Airmiles Andy".

World of Deference

Additionally the arrogance which expected respect when he appeared in a area or the supreme obsession about his honorifics used on his official documents in letters to his associates.

He avoided accountability while his mother, who strangely spoiled him, was still living. The monarch did at least revoke him of official roles and honorary colonelcies in the aftermath of his ill-fated and, as revealed, mendacious public statement six years ago.

Current Situation

Merely in the last two weeks that events sped up, following the issuance of biographical works giving more troubling information of his actions and that of his connections.

Further disclosures have again exposed Andrew's thinking that he could avoid lying about his contact with a notorious figure.

Society (and the journalists) were far ahead of the royal family. There was no one of any importance to support him, a outcome of all those years of arrogance.

Monarchical Concerns

The more astute family members recognized that. The key objective is to transfer the institution, if not as heretofore at least intact and unblemished.

For generations the last 190 years trying to reverse the legacy of earlier rulers, showing they are valuable, dutiful and responsive to their people.

He was placing all that in peril in an era when respect and discretion is no longer adequate.

Consequences

Ultimately, the famously indecisive monarch was pressured further. There was little choice. The royal household had lost control of the story.

Now it is the loss of honorifics and the ongoing and life-long social disgrace that will afflict Andrew the most.

• Downgrading: Demoted to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Past Example: The first monarch to forfeit his titles in recent history
• Military Service: Especially painful given his service in the engagement

He is still a constitutional officer, on paper able to substitute for the sovereign, and he is still in the succession to the throne, but neither of these will truly happen.

Future Prospects

Do individuals he encounters still acknowledge him? Will they still slip up and call him Your Highness? Will they even say Andrew,

Naturally, he is not withdrawing to a common area, but to the sovereign's vast grounds at a monarchical property.

At that location, he will be provided by the king with one of the estate properties and given some type of personal stipend.

It is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a token payment for more than 20 years, and Norfolk is a bit distant, but even so it may not be far enough.

Unresolved Issues

The situation continues. There are still documents in the custody of overseas authorities to be made public.

• Parliamentary Interest: Might lawmakers demand more
• Monetary Probe: Or examine the waste of public money
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his conduct

Perhaps for the time being the harm to the monarchy to the monarchy is limited. The statement from the institution was evidently that the revocation of titles was what the king, and especially other senior monarchical figures, desired.

A Shift in Position

The cessation of deception that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, significantly, the short communication showed evidently that the institution were siding with the complainant's account of events.

Furthermore, for the initial instance they finally showed consideration for the victims: "The measures are judged required, notwithstanding the truth that he continues to deny the allegations against him."

In the end it is arrogance, self-seeking and inactivity that will destroy the institution. In his foolishness, self-indulgence and corruption, Andrew appears never to have grasped that lesson.