Folly and Regal Arrogance Sunk Andrew, and It Might Persist Yet

This episode commenced with a isolated photograph, possibly the most consequential ever taken of a individual from the royal household.

There stood the Baron Killyleagh, standing closely beside a female youth, while another individual smiled knowingly in the background.

Without that snapshot, shot at a gathering in 2001, few would have credited the claims of a adolescent who stated she was trafficked across the Atlantic and obliged to have brief intimate contact with a member of the monarchy?

A strange, revealing gesture by someone who had overtly claimed to have never heard of her, said he could no have had sex with her, and yet handed over a substantial sum of family money to avert a drawn-out legal case.

Years of Controversy

Considering this, conversations of the royal family acting swiftly to sever ties with Andrew are wide of the mark. This scandal has continued for the better part of 15 years since that picture, and a further photo of Andrew walking amiably with a disgraced financier emerged.

• Self-importance: For what duration did his siblings, possibly even his mother and father, realize that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have known, if his employees and the law enforcement were fulfilling their roles, that he had some highly questionable associates given he publicly welcomed them to palaces.
• Monetary Excess: If the household did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his extravagance with public money.

Journeys were listed in public records: private aircraft flights from the palace to a country club and back again in time for lunch, chartered planes instead of scheduled services, all for the comfort of "Airmiles Andy".

A Life of Privilege

Then there was the entitlement which expected deference when he walked into a room or the supreme obsession about his honorifics used on his letterheads in messages to his personal acquaintances.

He managed to escape consequences while his parent, who strangely spoiled him, was still surviving. The Queen did at least strip him of public duties and military positions in the wake of his ill-fated and, it is now clear, untruthful public statement six years ago.

Recent Developments

It was only in the last fortnight that events accelerated, following the issuance of accounts giving more grim information of his conduct and that of his connections.

Further disclosures have again highlighted Andrew's assumption that he could get away with being untruthful about his interaction with a notorious figure.

The public (and the journalists) were far more perceptive of the royals. There was not a single person of any consequence to support him, a consequence of all those years of hubris.

Royal Worries

The more intelligent royals realized that. The primary concern is to hand down the crown, if not as before at least complete and unstained.

For generations the last 190 years trying to overcome the image of past sovereigns, showing they are beneficial, accountable and reactive to their citizens.

He was placing all that in danger in an era when deference and secrecy is no longer sufficient.

Aftermath

Eventually, the famously uncertain king was pressured additional. There was little choice. The royal household had lost control of the story.

Presently the removal of honorifics and the continued and lifetime personal shame that will afflict Andrew most severely.

• Reduction: Reduced to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Prior Instance: The initial member to surrender his designations in recent history
• Naval Career: Particularly painful given his duty in the Falklands war

He is still a constitutional officer, on paper able to act for the king, and he is still in the lineage to the monarchy, but neither of these will truly happen.

What Lies Ahead

Can persons he comes across still show respect to him? Will they still make mistakes and call him Your Highness? Would they say Mr,

Naturally, he is not retiring to suburbia, but to the monarchy's extensive property at a royal residence.

In that place, he will be provided by the monarch with one of the grace and favour houses and given some form of financial support.

It is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a token rent for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit distant, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Unresolved Issues

This is not over. There are still documents in the custody of overseas authorities to be revealed.

• Parliamentary Interest: Could legislators demand more
• Monetary Probe: Or examine the improper use of public money
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a criminal probe into his behavior

Possibly for the present the institutional damage to the institution is limited. The message from the palace was clearly that the removal of titles was what the sovereign, and especially other senior family members, desired.

Altered Approach

No more deception that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, notably, the concise statement showed clearly that the royals were supporting the accuser's narrative of events.

Furthermore, for the premiere occasion they finally showed regard for the survivors: "The censures are deemed necessary, regardless of the truth that he persists in refuting the accusations against him."

Finally it is entitlement, self-interest and laziness that will destroy the institution. In his foolishness, self-gratification and corruption, Andrew seems never to have understood that lesson.