Folly and Monarchical Hubris Damaged Andrew, and It Could Continue Yet

This episode commenced with a single photograph, possibly the most consequential ever snapped of a individual from the royal household.

There stood the Earl of Inverness, standing closely beside a teenage girl, while a companion grinned knowingly in the background.

Absent that image, captured at a party in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the claims of a adolescent who declared she was trafficked across the Atlantic and compelled to have brief intimate contact with a individual of the royal family?

A curious, telling action by someone who had publicly claimed to have no heard of her, said he could never have had relations with her, and yet paid millions of his mother's funds to settle a long-delayed lawsuit.

Over a Decade of Controversy

In this context, conversations of the royals acting decisively to distance themselves from Andrew are misguided. This controversy has persisted for the majority of 15 years since that picture, and another snapshot of Andrew strolling pleasantly with a notorious individual surfaced.

• Self-importance: To what extent did his brothers and sisters, possibly even his relatives, understand that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have known, if his aides and the authorities were doing their jobs, that he had some deeply disreputable associates given he openly invited them to royal residences.
• Financial Extravagance: If the family did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his overspending with taxpayer funds.

Journeys were documented in official documents: helicopter flights from the estate to a country club and back again in time for midday meal, chartered planes instead of commercial flights, all for the benefit of "the travel enthusiast".

World of Deference

Then there was the arrogance which expected respect when he appeared in a space or the profound obsession about his royal titles used on his letterheads in messages to his personal acquaintances.

He could get away with it while his matriarch, who strangely spoiled him, was still surviving. The monarch did at least remove him of royal responsibilities and honorary colonelcies in the aftermath of his disastrous and, we now know, deceptive television interview six years ago.

Latest Events

Just in the last fortnight that events accelerated, following the publication of accounts giving more troubling details of his actions and that of his connections.

Further disclosures have again exposed Andrew's assumption that he could escape being untruthful about his contact with a notorious figure.

People (and the press) were far in advance of the royals. There was no one of any significance to speak up for him, a consequence of all those years of arrogance.

Royal Worries

The more intelligent family members recognized that. The key objective is to pass on the institution, if not as heretofore at least whole and unblemished.

For generations the last 190 years trying to undo the legacy of earlier rulers, showing they are beneficial, accountable and reactive to their people.

His actions endangered all that in jeopardy in an time when deference and privacy is no longer adequate.

The Fallout

Finally, the famously hesitant monarch was pressured further. There was little choice. The palace had lost control of the account.

Now it is the removal of honorifics and the ongoing and lifetime public humiliation that will pain Andrew most severely.

• Demotion: Reduced to just a commoner
• Prior Instance: The initial monarch to surrender his designations in contemporary era
• Armed Forces: Particularly stinging given his duty in the conflict

He remains a constitutional officer, on paper able to stand in for the king, and he is still in the lineage to the monarchy, but not any of these will ever occur.

Future Prospects

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

Of course, he is not withdrawing to a common area, but to the monarchy's vast grounds at Sandringham.

In that place, he will be supplied by the sovereign with one of the royal residences and given some type of financial support.

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

Outstanding Concerns

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

• Governmental Scrutiny: Will lawmakers seek further action
• Monetary Probe: Or investigate the waste of public money
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a police investigation into his actions

Perhaps for the moment the institutional damage to the crown is limited. The statement from the institution was evidently that the removal of honorifics was what the monarch, and particularly other senior royals, sought.

A Shift in Position

The cessation of deception that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, remarkably, the concise announcement showed clearly that the monarchy were aligning with the victim's version of events.

Additionally, for the initial instance they ultimately showed concern for the affected individuals: "The censures are deemed necessary, despite the truth that he continues to deny the accusations against him."

In the end it is entitlement, self-interest and laziness that will destroy the crown. In his foolishness, personal excess and corruption, Andrew gives the impression never to have learned that lesson.