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This episode commenced with a solitary photograph, possibly the most impactful ever captured of a member of the monarchy.

There stood the Earl of Inverness, arm-in-arm a teenage girl, while an associate grinned knowingly in the backdrop.

Lacking that image, captured at a party in 2001, who would have believed the assertions of a young woman who declared she was moved across the Atlantic and compelled to have brief relations with a prince of the royal family?

A strange, indicative move by someone who had openly claimed to have not heard of her, said he could never have had sex with her, and yet provided a large amount of his mother's funds to settle a drawn-out legal case.

Years of Controversy

Against this backdrop, discussions of the royals acting decisively to cut Andrew off are inaccurate. This scandal has endured for the better part of 15 years since that picture, and an additional photo of Andrew strolling congenially with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Hubris: For what duration did his siblings, possibly even his mother and father, realize that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Problematic Connections: They must have understood, if his employees and the police were fulfilling their roles, that he had some highly questionable companions given he unabashedly hosted them to palaces.
• Financial Extravagance: If the monarchy did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his extravagance with public money.

Journeys were listed in official documents: private aircraft transfers from the estate to a country club and back again in time for lunch, exclusive air travel instead of scheduled services, all for the comfort of "Airmiles Andy".

Existence of Entitlement

Additionally the presumption which required subservience when he appeared in a space or the profound consciousness about his honorifics used on his official documents in messages to his associates.

He managed to escape consequences while his matriarch, who strangely spoiled him, was still living. The Queen did at least revoke him of public duties and honorary colonelcies in the consequence of his catastrophic and, we now know, deceptive television interview six years ago.

Latest Events

It was only in the last two weeks that events progressed rapidly, following the publication of accounts giving more troubling particulars of his behavior and that of his associates.

More information have again exposed Andrew's thinking that he could escape deceiving about his interaction with a convicted criminal.

People (and the press) were far in advance 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 hubris.

Monarchical Concerns

The wiser monarchical figures realized that. The key objective is to transfer the monarchy, if not as heretofore at least intact and untarnished.

For generations the last 190 years trying to undo the image of past sovereigns, proving they are valuable, responsible and reactive to their subjects.

He was placing all that in jeopardy in an age when deference and discretion is no longer sufficient.

The Fallout

Eventually, the well-known indecisive sovereign was pressured further. There was little choice. The palace had relinquished authority of the narrative.

Presently the loss of designations and the continued and permanent public humiliation that will afflict Andrew most severely.

• Downgrading: Demoted to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Historical Precedent: The initial monarch to forfeit his honorifics in recent history
• Armed Forces: Particularly hurtful given his role in the Falklands war

He remains a royal advisor, on paper able to act for the sovereign, and he is still in the lineage to the monarchy, but neither of these will ever happen.

Future Prospects

Will people he encounters still show respect to him? Might they still forget themselves and call him Your Highness? Will they even say Andrew,

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

There, he will be furnished by the king with one of the royal residences and given some form of private allowance.

It is not his former home, where he paid a minimal rent for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit distant, but even so it may not be adequate distance.

Unresolved Issues

Matters remain unresolved. There are still records in the hands of American legislators to be revealed.

• Political Pressure: Will lawmakers seek further action
• Fiscal Review: Or investigate the waste of public money
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a criminal probe into his conduct

Maybe for the present the harm to the monarchy to the monarchy is limited. The narrative from the institution was evidently that the stripping of honorifics was what the king, and particularly other senior royals, desired.

A Shift in Position

An end to illusion that Andrew was acting willingly. And, significantly, the short announcement showed plainly that the monarchy were aligning with the accuser's narrative of events.

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

Ultimately it is entitlement, self-interest and indolence that will kill the crown. In his folly, self-indulgence and venality, Andrew seems never to have learned that reality.