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It all began with a isolated photograph, perhaps the most significant ever captured of a royal family member.

In the frame appeared the Baron Killyleagh, standing closely beside a young woman, while a companion smiled suggestively in the background.

Lacking that snapshot, shot at a gathering in 2001, few would have credited the allegations of a young woman who said she was transported across the Atlantic and obliged to have brief intimate contact with a prince of the royal family?

A strange, revealing action by someone who had openly asserted to have never heard of her, claimed he could no have had sex with her, and yet paid millions of his mother's resources to settle a drawn-out lawsuit.

Over a Decade of Scandal

Considering this, conversations of the royal family acting firmly to distance themselves from Andrew are misguided. This scandal has persisted for the majority of 15 years since that photograph, and an additional photo of Andrew walking amiably with a convicted sex offender came to light.

• Hubris: For what duration did his brothers and sisters, possibly even his mother and father, realize that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have understood, if his staff and the law enforcement were performing their duties, that he had some extremely unsavory companions given he openly hosted them to royal residences.
• Financial Extravagance: If the household did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with taxpayer funds.

Trips were printed in royal annual reports: private aircraft flights from the estate to a sporting venue and back again in time for lunch, chartered planes instead of commercial flights, all for the convenience of "the travel enthusiast".

Existence of Entitlement

Additionally the presumption which demanded deference when he entered a area or the extreme obsession about his royal titles used on his letterheads in communication to his associates.

He could get away with it while his parent, who inexplicably spoiled him, was still living. The sovereign did at least remove him of royal responsibilities and honorary colonelcies in the wake of his disastrous and, it is now clear, deceptive public statement six years ago.

Recent Developments

Merely in the last 14 days that events sped up, following the issuance of biographical works giving more disturbing particulars of his behavior and that of his connections.

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

The public (and the journalists) were far in advance of the royal family. There was nobody of any consequence to support him, a consequence of all those years of arrogance.

Royal Worries

The wiser family members realized that. The key objective is to hand down the monarchy, if not as previously at least whole and untarnished.

For generations the last 190 years trying to overcome the image of earlier rulers, showing they are beneficial, dutiful and reactive to their subjects.

Andrew was putting all that in jeopardy in an era when deference and secrecy is no longer enough.

Aftermath

Finally, the well-known hesitant sovereign was pushed further. There was no other option. The royal household had surrendered command of the story.

Presently the stripping of designations and the persistent and life-long public humiliation that will afflict Andrew most deeply.

• Demotion: Lowered to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Historical Precedent: The primary member to forfeit his designations in contemporary era
• Naval Career: Particularly stinging given his service in the Falklands war

He continues to be a constitutional officer, theoretically able to act for the sovereign, and he is still eighth in line to the crown, but none of these will actually happen.

Coming Developments

Will people he meets still show respect to him? Might they still make mistakes and call him Prince? Will they even say Andrew,

Certainly, he is not moving to suburbia, but to the sovereign's extensive property at a royal residence.

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 former home, where he paid a nominal rent for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit remote, but even so it may not be adequate distance.

Pending Matters

This is not over. There are still records in the custody of US Congress to be revealed.

• Political Pressure: Could parliament demand more
• Monetary Probe: Or investigate the misuse of state resources
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his behavior

Perhaps for the moment the harm to the monarchy to the crown is limited. The statement from the palace was clearly that the removal of honorifics was what the king, and particularly other senior royals, desired.

Altered Approach

No more deception that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, remarkably, the concise announcement showed evidently that the institution were aligning with the accuser's narrative of incidents.

Additionally, for the initial instance they eventually showed regard for the victims: "The censures are judged required, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the accusations against him."

In the end it is arrogance, self-interest and indolence that will undermine the monarchy. In his foolishness, personal excess and corruption, Andrew appears never to have learned that reality.