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

There stood the Duke of York, standing closely beside a teenage girl, while another individual smiled suggestively in the backdrop.

Absent that photograph, captured at a party in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the claims of a adolescent who stated she was trafficked across the sea and obliged to have perfunctory relations with a individual of the monarchy?

A strange, indicative gesture by someone who had openly claimed to have never known about her, asserted he could no have had intimate contact with her, and yet provided a large amount of family funds to resolve a protracted court action.

A Long Period of Disgrace

Considering this, talk of the royal family acting swiftly to distance themselves from Andrew are wide of the mark. This affair has endured for the better part of 15 years since that photograph, and another photo of Andrew ambling amiably with a disgraced financier emerged.

• Hubris: For what duration did his brothers and sisters, maybe even his mother and father, realize that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Problematic Connections: They must have understood, if his staff and the law enforcement were fulfilling their roles, that he had some extremely unsavory associates given he publicly invited them to palaces.
• Financial Extravagance: If the monarchy did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with taxpayer funds.

Travel were printed in official documents: chopper transfers from the royal residence to a golf course and back again in time for lunch, private flights instead of scheduled services, all for the convenience of "the frequent flyer".

A Life of Privilege

Furthermore the arrogance which required respect when he entered a area or the supreme awareness about his designations used on his correspondence in letters to his personal acquaintances.

He could get away with it while his matriarch, who inexplicably indulged him, was still living. The Queen did at least remove him of public duties and ceremonial ranks in the wake of his catastrophic and, it is now clear, mendacious television interview six years ago.

Current Situation

Merely in the last 14 days that events progressed rapidly, following the release of books giving more troubling details of his actions and that of his companions.

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

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

Institutional Fears

The wiser royals realized that. The key objective is to pass on the monarchy, if not as heretofore at least intact and untarnished.

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

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

The Fallout

Eventually, the notoriously uncertain king was pressured further. There was no other option. The royal household had surrendered command of the account.

Currently the stripping of honorifics and the persistent and life-long personal shame that will hurt Andrew most severely.

• Reduction: Demoted to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Past Example: The primary member to surrender his honorifics in modern times
• Armed Forces: Particularly painful given his duty in the Falklands war

He continues to be a constitutional officer, theoretically able to substitute for the sovereign, and he is still in the succession to the monarchy, but neither of these will truly come to pass.

Future Prospects

Will people he encounters still acknowledge him? Might they still forget themselves and call him Prince? Will they even say Sir,

Certainly, he is not retiring to a common area, but to the sovereign's vast property at a royal residence.

In that place, he will be supplied by the king with one of the estate properties and given some form of private allowance.

This is not his former home, where he paid a token rent for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit remote, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Pending Matters

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

• Governmental Scrutiny: Will parliament request additional information
• Fiscal Review: Or examine the misuse of taxpayer funds
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his behavior

Perhaps for the moment the reputational impact to the institution is restricted. The statement from the institution was plainly that the stripping of designations was what the sovereign, and particularly other senior monarchical figures, desired.

Changed Stance

An end to deception that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, notably, the brief communication showed evidently that the institution were supporting the complainant's account of events.

Even more, for the initial instance they ultimately showed concern for the affected individuals: "These actions are considered essential, despite the truth that he maintains his innocence of the accusations against him."

Finally it is arrogance, self-seeking and indolence that will destroy the crown. In his folly, self-indulgence and corruption, Andrew gives the impression never to have grasped that truth.