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The saga started with a single photograph, arguably the most consequential ever captured of a individual from the royal household.

Present was the Baron Killyleagh, standing closely beside a teenage girl, while a companion smiled suggestively in the backdrop.

Without that photograph, taken at a party in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the claims of a teenager who stated she was transported across the sea and forced to have perfunctory relations with a individual of the monarchy?

An odd, indicative gesture by someone who had overtly asserted to have no heard of her, said he could not have had intimate contact with her, and yet provided a substantial sum of monarchical money to settle a protracted legal case.

Over a Decade of Controversy

Considering this, conversations of the monarchy acting decisively to sever ties with Andrew are misguided. This controversy has continued for the better part of 15 years since that picture, and a further snapshot of Andrew strolling pleasantly with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Self-importance: To what extent did his brothers and sisters, possibly even his mother and father, know that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Questionable Associations: They must have known, if his aides and the police were performing their duties, that he had some extremely unsavory friends given he unabashedly invited them to royal residences.
• Monetary Excess: If the household did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his extravagance with public money.

Trips were listed in official documents: helicopter transfers from the estate to a sporting venue and back again in time for lunch, private flights instead of scheduled services, all for the convenience of "the travel enthusiast".

A Life of Privilege

Then there was the presumption which expected respect when he entered a area or the supreme obsession about his designations used on his correspondence in messages to his personal acquaintances.

He could get away with it while his matriarch, who inexplicably pampered him, was still living. The Queen did at least remove him of official roles and honorary colonelcies in the wake of his disastrous and, we now know, deceptive media appearance six years ago.

Recent Developments

Just in the last 14 days that events progressed rapidly, following the release of accounts giving more grim particulars of his actions and that of his connections.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's thinking that he could escape lying about his contact with a disgraced individual.

The public (and the press) were far more perceptive of the royals. There was nobody of any importance to support him, a result of all those years of arrogance.

Royal Worries

The wiser royals recognized that. The primary concern is to transfer the crown, if not as heretofore at least whole and unblemished.

They have spent the last 190 years trying to overcome the reputation of past sovereigns, showing they are beneficial, responsible and responsive to their citizens.

His actions endangered all that in peril in an era when deference and discretion is no longer adequate.

Aftermath

Eventually, the notoriously uncertain king was pushed further. There was no alternative. The royal household had surrendered command of the story.

Currently the removal of designations and the ongoing and life-long social disgrace that will afflict Andrew most severely.

• Downgrading: Lowered to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Past Example: The initial royal to lose his honorifics in modern times
• Naval Career: Notably stinging given his duty in the Falklands war

He remains a counsellor of state, on paper able to act for the sovereign, and he is still eighth in line to the crown, but not any of these will truly come to pass.

Coming Developments

Will people he meets still show respect to him? Will they still forget themselves and call him Sir? Might they say Mr,

Of course, he is not withdrawing to an ordinary town, but to the royal family's vast estate at a royal residence.

At that location, he will be supplied by the sovereign with one of the estate properties and given some sort of personal stipend.

This is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a token lease for more than 20 years, and Norfolk is a bit distant, but even so it may not be adequate distance.

Unresolved Issues

This is not over. There are still records in the hands of US Congress to be disclosed.

• Parliamentary Interest: Will lawmakers request additional information
• Financial Investigation: Or investigate the improper use of taxpayer funds
• Criminal Investigation: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his conduct

Possibly for the time being the reputational impact to the crown is contained. The message from the royal household was evidently that the removal of designations was what the monarch, and notably other senior royals, desired.

Altered Approach

No more illusion that Andrew was acting willingly. And, significantly, the concise announcement showed plainly that the monarchy were siding with the complainant's version of occurrences.

Additionally, for the initial instance they ultimately showed concern for the victims: "These actions are judged required, regardless of the reality that he maintains his innocence of the claims against him."

In the end it is presumption, self-seeking and indolence that will undermine the crown. In his folly, self-indulgence and venality, Andrew gives the impression never to have grasped that lesson.