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The saga started with a isolated photograph, perhaps the most significant ever snapped of a individual from the royal household.

There stood the Baron Killyleagh, standing closely beside a female youth, while a companion smiled knowingly in the backdrop.

Absent that snapshot, taken at a party in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the assertions of a adolescent who said she was transported across the ocean and obliged to have cursory intimate contact with a individual of the royal family?

An odd, telling move by someone who had openly stated to have never known about her, claimed he could no have had relations with her, and yet paid millions of monarchical money to resolve a long-delayed court action.

A Long Period of Controversy

In this context, discussions of the royal family acting firmly to distance themselves from Andrew are misguided. This affair has continued for the majority of 15 years since that image, and a further snapshot of Andrew ambling amiably with a notorious individual surfaced.

• Hubris: For what duration did his brothers and sisters, perhaps even his parents, know that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Problematic Connections: They must have known, if his employees and the police were performing their duties, that he had some extremely unsavory companions given he openly hosted them to royal residences.
• Monetary Excess: If the household did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with public money.

Journeys were printed in royal annual reports: helicopter flights from the royal residence to a country club and back again in time for dining, private flights instead of regular transport, all for the benefit of "Airmiles Andy".

Existence of Entitlement

Furthermore the presumption which demanded subservience when he appeared in a area or the supreme obsession about his royal titles used on his letterheads in letters to his associates.

He avoided accountability while his matriarch, who unaccountably indulged him, was still surviving. The Queen did at least remove him of public duties and honorary colonelcies in the wake of his disastrous and, as revealed, mendacious public statement six years ago.

Current Situation

It was only in the last 14 days that events progressed rapidly, following the release of accounts giving more grim details of his behavior and that of his associates.

Further disclosures have again highlighted Andrew's assumption that he could avoid being untruthful about his interaction with a convicted criminal.

The public (and the press) were far ahead of the monarchy. There was nobody of any significance to speak up for him, a outcome of all those years of presumption.

Monarchical Concerns

The more astute monarchical figures understood that. The primary concern is to pass on the monarchy, if not as heretofore at least complete and unstained.

Over time the last 190 years trying to undo the legacy of earlier rulers, proving they are beneficial, dutiful and attentive to their subjects.

He was placing all that in jeopardy in an age when deference and secrecy is no longer adequate.

Aftermath

Ultimately, the famously uncertain monarch was prodded additional. There was no other option. The institution had lost control of the narrative.

Presently the loss of honorifics and the persistent and permanent public humiliation that will afflict Andrew most deeply.

• Downgrading: Lowered to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Historical Precedent: The primary monarch to forfeit his designations in contemporary era
• Naval Career: Especially hurtful given his role in the Falklands war

He remains a constitutional officer, in principle able to stand in for the king, and he is still in the succession to the throne, but not any of these will ever come to pass.

Future Prospects

Do individuals he encounters still show respect to him? Will they still forget themselves and call him Prince? Will they even say Sir,

Certainly, he is not moving to suburbia, but to the royal family's large grounds at a monarchical property.

In that place, he will be furnished by the sovereign with one of the grace and favour houses and given some type of financial support.

This differs from his previous residence, where he paid a token rent for more than 20 years, and Norfolk is a bit remote, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Outstanding Concerns

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

• Political Pressure: Will parliament seek further action
• Monetary Probe: Or examine the waste of public money
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a police investigation into his conduct

Perhaps for the present the harm to the monarchy to the monarchy is limited. The message from the institution was plainly that the revocation of designations was what the monarch, and especially other senior family members, desired.

Changed Stance

The cessation of pretence that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, remarkably, the concise statement showed clearly that the royals were supporting the accuser's narrative of events.

Additionally, for the first time they finally showed regard for the affected individuals: "The censures are judged required, regardless of the reality that he persists in refuting the claims against him."

Finally it is entitlement, selfishness and laziness that will kill the crown. In his folly, self-gratification and venality, Andrew seems never to have understood that truth.