🔗 Share this article

This episode commenced with a solitary photograph, perhaps the most impactful ever taken of a royal family member.

In the frame appeared the Baron Killyleagh, standing closely beside a young woman, while another individual grinned knowingly in the background.

Without that photograph, taken at a social event in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the claims of a adolescent who said she was transported across the ocean and compelled to have perfunctory sexual encounters with a prince of the royal family?

An odd, revealing move by someone who had openly claimed to have never heard of her, asserted he could not have had sex with her, and yet paid a large amount of his mother's resources to avert a long-delayed lawsuit.

A Long Period of Controversy

Considering this, discussions of the monarchy acting swiftly to sever ties with Andrew are wide of the mark. This affair has endured for the majority of 15 years since that photograph, and another snapshot of Andrew strolling pleasantly with a convicted sex offender came to light.

• Hubris: How long did his siblings, maybe even his mother and father, understand that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have understood, if his employees and the authorities were fulfilling their roles, that he had some deeply disreputable associates given he unabashedly invited them to palaces.
• Fiscal Irresponsibility: If the family did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his extravagance with state resources.

Travel were listed in official documents: helicopter flights from the royal residence to a country club and back again in time for lunch, chartered planes instead of regular transport, all for the convenience of "Airmiles Andy".

World of Deference

Then there was the arrogance which required respect when he appeared in a room or the supreme consciousness about his honorifics used on his official documents in letters to his personal acquaintances.

He could get away with it while his parent, who strangely pampered him, was still surviving. The sovereign did at least remove him of royal responsibilities and honorary colonelcies in the consequence of his catastrophic and, it is now clear, deceptive media appearance six years ago.

Recent Developments

Merely in the last fortnight that events sped up, following the release of biographical works giving more troubling particulars of his actions and that of his associates.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's thinking that he could escape being untruthful about his contact with a notorious figure.

Society (and the media) were far ahead of the royal family. There was not a single person of any consequence to speak up for him, a consequence of all those years of presumption.

Institutional Fears

The wiser family members understood that. The primary concern is to pass on the monarchy, if not as previously at least complete and untarnished.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to reverse the legacy of earlier rulers, showing they are valuable, responsible and attentive to their citizens.

He was placing all that in danger in an age when submission and discretion is no longer adequate.

The Fallout

Eventually, the notoriously indecisive sovereign was prodded further. There was no alternative. The palace had surrendered command of the account.

Presently the stripping of honorifics and the persistent and permanent personal shame that will pain Andrew the most.

• Demotion: Lowered to just a private citizen
• Past Example: The first monarch to surrender his honorifics in contemporary era
• Naval Career: Particularly painful given his duty in the Falklands war

He continues to be a constitutional officer, on paper able to stand in for the sovereign, and he is still in the succession to the throne, but not any of these will truly come to pass.

What Lies Ahead

Can persons he comes across still defer to him? Will they still slip up and call him Prince? Would they say Andrew,

Certainly, he is not retiring to suburbia, but to the monarchy's large estate at a royal residence.

In that place, he will be furnished by the monarch with one of the royal residences and given some form of personal stipend.

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

Unresolved Issues

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

• Governmental Scrutiny: Could parliament request additional information
• Financial Investigation: Or scrutinize the improper use of state resources
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his behavior

Maybe for the moment the harm to the monarchy to the monarchy is contained. The message from the royal household was clearly that the removal of honorifics was what the sovereign, and notably other senior family members, wanted.

A Shift in Position

An end to deception that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, significantly, the concise announcement showed plainly that the royals were aligning with the complainant's narrative of incidents.

Furthermore, for the premiere occasion they eventually showed regard for the survivors: "The measures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the accusations against him."

Ultimately it is entitlement, self-seeking and inactivity that will kill the institution. In his stupidity, personal excess and venality, Andrew gives the impression never to have grasped that truth.