🔗 Share this article

It all began with a solitary photograph, perhaps the most significant ever taken of a member of the monarchy.

Present was the Earl of Inverness, arm-in-arm a female youth, while a companion grinned suggestively in the rear.

Lacking that image, captured at a social event in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the claims of a teenager who stated she was moved across the ocean and compelled to have perfunctory relations with a prince of the royal bloodline?

A strange, revealing move by someone who had overtly claimed to have never been aware of her, claimed he could no have had sex with her, and yet handed over a large amount of his mother's funds to resolve a protracted legal case.

Over a Decade of Disgrace

In this context, conversations of the monarchy acting firmly to sever ties with Andrew are inaccurate. This scandal has persisted for the majority of 15 years since that image, and another photo of Andrew strolling amiably with a disgraced financier surfaced.

• Arrogance: To what extent did his brothers and sisters, maybe even his mother and father, realize that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Questionable Associations: They must have known, if his staff and the police were performing their duties, that he had some highly questionable friends given he unabashedly hosted them to palaces.
• Fiscal Irresponsibility: If the family did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his extravagance with state resources.

Trips were listed in public records: chopper flights from the palace to a sporting venue and back again in time for lunch, chartered planes instead of regular transport, all for the comfort of "the frequent flyer".

World of Deference

Furthermore the presumption which required respect when he appeared in a area or the extreme consciousness about his designations used on his letterheads in communication to his personal acquaintances.

He managed to escape consequences while his matriarch, who unaccountably pampered him, was still alive. The sovereign did at least strip him of official roles and military positions in the wake of his ill-fated and, it is now clear, untruthful television interview 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 behavior and that of his connections.

Further disclosures have again revealed Andrew's assumption that he could avoid deceiving about his relationship with a notorious figure.

Society (and the journalists) were far in advance of the royal family. There was nobody of any consequence to speak up for him, a result of all those years of presumption.

Monarchical Concerns

The more intelligent family members understood that. The one imperative is to hand down the institution, if not as previously at least whole and unstained.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to undo the legacy of previous monarchs, proving they are valuable, dutiful and reactive to their subjects.

Andrew was putting all that in jeopardy in an age when respect and discretion is no longer sufficient.

Aftermath

Eventually, the notoriously hesitant monarch was pushed further. There was no alternative. The palace had lost control of the narrative.

Now it is the loss of designations and the ongoing and life-long social disgrace that will afflict Andrew most deeply.

• Reduction: Reduced to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Past Example: The initial member to lose his designations in contemporary era
• Military Service: Notably hurtful given his service in the Falklands war

He continues to be a constitutional officer, theoretically able to substitute for the sovereign, and he is still eighth in line to the monarchy, but not any of these will ever come to pass.

Coming Developments

Can persons he encounters still defer to him? Might they still slip up and call him Prince? Will they even say Andrew,

Of course, he is not moving to suburbia, but to the sovereign's large estate at a royal residence.

There, he will be supplied by the sovereign with one of the estate properties and given some type of personal stipend.

It is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a minimal lease for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit remote, but even so it may not be far enough.

Unresolved Issues

The situation continues. There are still records in the possession of US Congress to be revealed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Might lawmakers seek further action
• Fiscal Review: Or scrutinize the misuse of taxpayer funds
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a criminal probe into his conduct

Perhaps for the moment the institutional damage to the institution is limited. The message from the institution was evidently that the stripping of titles was what the king, and particularly other senior family members, wanted.

Changed Stance

An end to deception that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, significantly, the concise announcement showed clearly that the royals were aligning with the victim's narrative of incidents.

Even more, for the first time they finally showed regard for the survivors: "These actions are judged required, regardless of the reality that he maintains his innocence of the claims against him."

Ultimately it is presumption, self-interest and indolence that will destroy the monarchy. In his foolishness, self-gratification and greed, Andrew gives the impression never to have understood that truth.