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The saga started with a isolated photograph, perhaps the most impactful ever snapped of a royal family member.

Present was the Earl of Inverness, standing closely beside a teenage girl, while an associate smiled conspiratorially in the background.

Lacking that photograph, taken at a social event in 2001, who would have believed the claims of a young woman who declared she was transported across the Atlantic and obliged to have brief intimate contact with a prince of the royal family?

A strange, indicative gesture by someone who had overtly asserted to have no been aware of her, said he could never have had intimate contact with her, and yet provided a large amount of his mother's money to resolve a protracted court action.

Years of Scandal

Against this backdrop, conversations of the royal family acting firmly to distance themselves from Andrew are misguided. This controversy has endured for the largest portion of 15 years since that picture, and another snapshot of Andrew strolling congenially with a disgraced financier emerged.

• Arrogance: To what extent did his family members, perhaps even his parents, know that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have realized, if his employees and the authorities were doing their jobs, that he had some extremely unsavory companions given he openly hosted them to royal residences.
• Monetary Excess: If the family did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his overspending with taxpayer funds.

Travel were listed in official documents: helicopter travel from the estate to a sporting venue and back again in time for dining, exclusive air travel instead of regular transport, all for the benefit of "the frequent flyer".

World of Deference

Furthermore the presumption which required subservience when he entered a room or the supreme obsession about his royal titles used on his letterheads in communication to his personal acquaintances.

He avoided accountability while his matriarch, who strangely indulged him, was still alive. The Queen did at least revoke him of official roles and honorary colonelcies in the aftermath of his ill-fated and, we now know, deceptive media appearance six years ago.

Current Situation

Merely in the last 14 days that events progressed rapidly, following the publication of biographical works giving more troubling information of his conduct and that of his associates.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's assumption that he could avoid being untruthful about his interaction with a convicted criminal.

People (and the media) were far ahead of the royals. There was no one of any significance to support him, a consequence of all those years of presumption.

Royal Worries

The wiser 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 overcome the image of earlier rulers, showing they are beneficial, accountable and reactive to their people.

He was placing all that in danger in an era when submission and privacy is no longer enough.

The Fallout

Eventually, the notoriously indecisive king was prodded further. There was little choice. The royal household had lost control of the narrative.

Currently the stripping of designations and the persistent and life-long personal shame that will pain Andrew most deeply.

• Reduction: Demoted to just a commoner
• Historical Precedent: The first monarch to lose his honorifics in contemporary era
• Military Service: Especially painful given his service in the engagement

He continues to be a constitutional officer, in principle able to substitute for the sovereign, and he is still in the lineage to the throne, but neither of these will actually happen.

What Lies Ahead

Will people he encounters still acknowledge him? Will they still make mistakes and call him Sir? Would they say Andrew,

Of course, he is not withdrawing to suburbia, but to the monarchy's extensive property at a royal residence.

In that place, he will be provided by the king with one of the grace and favour houses and given some type of private allowance.

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

Unresolved Issues

This is not over. There are still records in the hands of American legislators to be revealed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Will lawmakers request additional information
• Financial Investigation: Or scrutinize the waste of taxpayer funds
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a police investigation into his behavior

Maybe for the time being the harm to the monarchy to the institution is contained. The narrative from the institution was evidently that the removal of honorifics was what the sovereign, and particularly other senior monarchical figures, wanted.

Changed Stance

An end to deception that Andrew was acting willingly. And, notably, the brief communication showed clearly that the royals were supporting the complainant's narrative of occurrences.

Additionally, for the first time they finally showed regard for the victims: "These actions are judged required, regardless of the truth that he continues to deny the allegations against him."

Finally it is presumption, self-interest and inactivity that will undermine the monarchy. In his folly, personal excess and corruption, Andrew appears never to have learned that lesson.