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It all began with a isolated photograph, perhaps the most consequential ever captured of a member of the monarchy.

There stood the Earl of Inverness, arm-in-arm a female youth, while an associate smiled suggestively in the rear.

Without that image, captured at a social event in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the claims of a adolescent who declared she was trafficked across the Atlantic and compelled to have brief sexual encounters with a prince of the monarchy?

An odd, telling gesture by someone who had overtly claimed to have not known about her, said he could not have had relations with her, and yet paid a large amount of family resources to settle a long-delayed legal case.

Over a Decade of Disgrace

Against this backdrop, discussions of the royals acting swiftly to distance themselves from Andrew are wide of the mark. This scandal has persisted for the largest portion of 15 years since that picture, and an additional image of Andrew ambling pleasantly with a convicted sex offender emerged.

• Arrogance: To what extent did his family members, maybe even his mother and father, know that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Problematic Connections: They must have realized, if his staff and the police were doing their jobs, that he had some extremely unsavory friends given he publicly invited them to palaces.
• Financial Extravagance: If the family did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his overspending with public money.

Travel were printed in public records: chopper transfers from the estate to a sporting venue and back again in time for midday meal, chartered planes instead of regular transport, all for the benefit of "the travel enthusiast".

Existence of Entitlement

Then there was the entitlement which required subservience when he walked into a area or the profound awareness about his royal titles used on his letterheads in messages to his friends.

He could get away with it while his mother, who unaccountably pampered him, was still alive. The monarch did at least revoke him of official roles and ceremonial ranks in the consequence of his disastrous and, it is now clear, untruthful public statement six years ago.

Current Situation

Merely in the last 14 days that events progressed rapidly, following the release of accounts giving more troubling details of his conduct and that of his connections.

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

People (and the press) were far more perceptive of the monarchy. There was nobody of any consequence to speak up for him, a outcome of all those years of hubris.

Institutional Fears

The more astute royals recognized that. The one imperative is to transfer the monarchy, if not as heretofore at least complete and unblemished.

Over time the last 190 years trying to overcome the image of previous monarchs, demonstrating they are useful, dutiful and reactive to their people.

His actions endangered all that in danger in an time when submission and secrecy is no longer sufficient.

The Fallout

Finally, the well-known hesitant sovereign was pushed more. There was little choice. The royal household had lost control of the narrative.

Presently the removal of honorifics and the continued and life-long public humiliation that will pain Andrew most deeply.

• Downgrading: Demoted to just a commoner
• Prior Instance: The initial member to surrender his honorifics in recent history
• Naval Career: Notably hurtful given his service in the Falklands war

He is still a constitutional officer, on paper able to act for the sovereign, and he is still eighth in line to the throne, but none of these will truly occur.

What Lies Ahead

Do individuals he encounters still defer to him? Might they still slip up and call him Sir? Might they say Andrew,

Certainly, he is not withdrawing to suburbia, but to the royal family's large property at Sandringham.

There, he will be furnished by the sovereign with one of the royal residences and given some sort of financial support.

It is not his former home, where he paid a minimal payment for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit distant, but even so it may not be adequate distance.

Unresolved Issues

This is not over. There are still files in the possession of American legislators to be made public.

• Political Pressure: Could lawmakers request additional information
• Monetary Probe: Or investigate the waste of state resources
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a police investigation into his behavior

Maybe for the time being the harm to the monarchy to the institution is limited. The statement from the institution was clearly that the stripping of designations was what the king, and particularly other senior monarchical figures, sought.

Changed Stance

The cessation of illusion that Andrew was acting willingly. And, significantly, the short announcement showed plainly that the monarchy were siding with the complainant's narrative of occurrences.

Furthermore, for the first time they eventually showed regard for the victims: "The measures are considered essential, regardless of the reality that he maintains his innocence of the allegations against him."

In the end it is arrogance, self-interest and indolence that will kill the monarchy. In his stupidity, self-indulgence and venality, Andrew gives the impression never to have learned that truth.