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

There stood the Duke of York, arm-in-arm a young woman, while another individual beamed knowingly in the background.

Absent that image, shot at a social event in 2001, few would have credited the allegations of a young woman who said she was trafficked across the Atlantic and forced to have cursory sexual encounters with a prince of the royal family?

An odd, telling action by someone who had publicly asserted to have not been aware of her, asserted he could never have had sex with her, and yet provided a substantial sum of his mother's resources to resolve a protracted legal case.

A Long Period of Scandal

In this context, conversations of the royals acting decisively to cut Andrew off are misguided. This controversy has endured for the majority of 15 years since that picture, and another photo of Andrew walking congenially with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Arrogance: For what duration did his family members, perhaps even his mother and father, know that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Problematic Connections: They must have understood, if his aides and the police were performing their duties, that he had some highly questionable associates given he unabashedly invited them to estates.
• Financial Extravagance: If the family did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with public money.

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

Existence of Entitlement

Then there was the arrogance which demanded subservience when he appeared in a space or the supreme obsession about his designations used on his letterheads in messages to his friends.

He managed to escape consequences while his parent, who unaccountably indulged him, was still alive. The monarch did at least revoke him of royal responsibilities and honorary colonelcies in the consequence of his ill-fated and, we now know, deceptive media appearance six years ago.

Current Situation

Merely in the last 14 days that events accelerated, following the publication of accounts giving more grim particulars of his behavior and that of his companions.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's belief that he could escape lying about his relationship with a convicted criminal.

The public (and the media) were far more perceptive of the royal family. There was no one of any significance to support him, a outcome of all those years of hubris.

Monarchical Concerns

The wiser monarchical figures recognized that. The key objective is to hand down the crown, if not as before at least intact and unstained.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to reverse the image of past sovereigns, showing they are beneficial, dutiful and attentive to their people.

Andrew was putting all that in danger in an time when respect and discretion is no longer enough.

Consequences

Finally, the famously indecisive king was prodded more. There was no other option. The institution had surrendered command of the account.

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

• Downgrading: Demoted to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Prior Instance: The initial member to surrender his honorifics in contemporary era
• Naval Career: Particularly painful given his role in the conflict

He is still a royal advisor, in principle able to stand in for the king, and he is still eighth in line to the crown, but neither of these will truly occur.

What Lies Ahead

Do individuals he comes across still show respect to him? Could they still slip up and call him Prince? Will they even say Sir,

Naturally, he is not retiring to a common area, but to the sovereign's vast property at Sandringham.

In that place, he will be supplied by the sovereign with one of the royal residences and given some form of private allowance.

This is not his former home, 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 adequate distance.

Pending Matters

The situation continues. There are still records in the hands of overseas authorities to be made public.

• Political Pressure: Might parliament request additional information
• Monetary Probe: Or investigate the waste of public money
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a police investigation into his actions

Possibly for the moment the institutional damage to the crown is restricted. The message from the royal household was plainly that the removal of designations was what the sovereign, and especially other senior family members, wanted.

Changed Stance

No more illusion that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, remarkably, the concise announcement showed evidently that the monarchy were supporting the complainant's account of incidents.

Even more, for the initial instance they eventually showed consideration for the survivors: "The censures are judged required, despite the reality that he maintains his innocence of the accusations against him."

Finally it is presumption, self-seeking and laziness that will undermine the crown. In his foolishness, self-indulgence and corruption, Andrew gives the impression never to have grasped that truth.