🔗 Share this article

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

There stood the Earl of Inverness, with his arm around a teenage girl, while another individual smiled suggestively in the background.

Lacking that snapshot, shot at a gathering in 2001, few would have credited the claims of a adolescent who stated she was trafficked across the sea and compelled to have brief relations with a member of the royal bloodline?

A strange, revealing action by someone who had overtly stated to have never been aware of her, asserted he could no have had relations with her, and yet paid millions of monarchical money to settle a long-delayed legal case.

Over a Decade of Disgrace

In this context, discussions of the monarchy acting firmly to distance themselves from Andrew are wide of the mark. This affair has endured for the better part of 15 years since that image, and a further snapshot of Andrew ambling amiably with a notorious individual emerged.

• Hubris: For what duration did his siblings, possibly even his relatives, know that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Questionable Associations: They must have realized, if his aides and the law enforcement were doing their jobs, that he had some deeply disreputable friends given he publicly hosted them to estates.
• Financial Extravagance: If the monarchy did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his overspending with taxpayer funds.

Journeys were printed in public records: chopper flights from the palace to a country club and back again in time for lunch, private flights instead of commercial flights, all for the benefit of "the travel enthusiast".

Existence of Entitlement

Furthermore the presumption which required respect when he entered a area or the supreme obsession about his designations used on his correspondence in messages to his friends.

He managed to escape consequences while his matriarch, who strangely spoiled him, was still surviving. The sovereign did at least remove him of royal responsibilities and military positions in the aftermath of his ill-fated and, it is now clear, mendacious media appearance six years ago.

Current Situation

Merely in the last fortnight that events sped up, following the publication of books giving more grim particulars of his behavior and that of his connections.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's assumption that he could avoid deceiving about his interaction with a disgraced individual.

People (and the press) were far ahead of the royals. There was not a single person of any significance to defend him, a result of all those years of presumption.

Royal Worries

The wiser monarchical figures realized that. The primary concern is to pass on the crown, if not as heretofore at least intact and unblemished.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to reverse the image of past sovereigns, proving they are valuable, accountable and reactive to their citizens.

His actions endangered all that in danger in an time when respect and discretion is no longer enough.

Aftermath

Ultimately, the well-known indecisive monarch was pushed additional. There was no other option. The palace had lost control of the story.

Currently the loss of designations and the persistent and lifetime social disgrace that will pain Andrew most severely.

• Demotion: Demoted to just a commoner
• Past Example: The initial royal to forfeit his designations in modern times
• Naval Career: Particularly stinging given his service in the conflict

He continues to be a constitutional officer, in principle able to substitute for the sovereign, and he is still in the lineage to the crown, but none of these will actually occur.

Coming Developments

Do individuals he comes across still defer to him? Might they still slip up and call him Prince? Will they even say Andrew,

Naturally, he is not retiring to suburbia, but to the royal family's extensive estate at Sandringham.

In that place, he will be provided by the monarch with one of the estate properties and given some type of private allowance.

This differs from his prior accommodation, where he paid a nominal rent for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit distant, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Unresolved Issues

The situation continues. There are still files in the custody of American legislators to be revealed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Might legislators request additional information
• Financial Investigation: Or scrutinize the misuse of taxpayer funds
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a criminal probe into his actions

Maybe for the moment the reputational impact to the crown is restricted. The message from the institution was evidently that the revocation of designations was what the sovereign, and particularly other senior monarchical figures, wanted.

Changed Stance

No more pretence that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, remarkably, the short communication showed evidently that the institution were aligning with the victim's version of events.

Even more, for the initial instance they eventually showed consideration for the victims: "These actions are considered essential, despite the reality that he maintains his innocence of the accusations against him."

Ultimately it is presumption, selfishness and indolence that will destroy the institution. In his foolishness, personal excess and corruption, Andrew gives the impression never to have understood that reality.