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

In the frame appeared the Duke of York, standing closely beside a young woman, while another individual smiled suggestively in the rear.

Lacking that image, shot at a social event in 2001, it would have been difficult to accept the claims of a young woman who said she was trafficked across the sea and compelled to have brief sexual encounters with a prince of the monarchy?

A curious, indicative gesture by someone who had overtly asserted to have never heard of her, said he could never have had sex with her, and yet handed over a substantial sum of his mother's money to avert a long-delayed court action.

Years of Controversy

Against this backdrop, conversations of the monarchy acting decisively to cut Andrew off are wide of the mark. This controversy has persisted for the better part of 15 years since that image, and a further snapshot of Andrew ambling amiably with a disgraced financier surfaced.

• Arrogance: For what duration did his siblings, possibly even his relatives, understand that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Problematic Connections: They must have understood, if his staff and the law enforcement were performing their duties, that he had some highly questionable companions given he openly hosted them to royal residences.
• Monetary Excess: If the monarchy did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his overspending with public money.

Trips were printed in royal annual reports: chopper transfers from the estate to a country club and back again in time for midday meal, private flights instead of commercial flights, all for the convenience of "the frequent flyer".

Existence of Entitlement

Furthermore the entitlement which expected respect when he entered a space or the extreme awareness about his royal titles used on his official documents in letters to his personal acquaintances.

He managed to escape consequences while his parent, who strangely indulged him, was still surviving. The sovereign did at least remove him of official roles and military positions in the consequence 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 release of accounts giving more troubling information of his actions and that of his connections.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's belief that he could get away with deceiving about his contact with a convicted criminal.

The public (and the press) were far in advance of the royal family. There was no one of any significance to defend him, a result of all those years of presumption.

Institutional Fears

The more intelligent royals understood that. The one imperative is to hand down the crown, if not as heretofore at least whole and untarnished.

For generations the last 190 years trying to overcome the image of earlier rulers, proving they are beneficial, accountable and attentive to their people.

Andrew was putting all that in peril in an era when respect and privacy is no longer enough.

The Fallout

Eventually, the famously uncertain sovereign was pushed additional. There was no alternative. The institution had relinquished authority of the story.

Currently the stripping of designations and the persistent and permanent social disgrace that will afflict Andrew most deeply.

• Reduction: Lowered to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Prior Instance: The first royal to forfeit his honorifics in modern times
• Armed Forces: Especially hurtful given his duty in the Falklands war

He continues to be a royal advisor, in principle able to act for the monarch, and he is still in the lineage to the crown, but not any of these will truly happen.

Coming Developments

Do individuals he encounters still show respect to him? Might they still make mistakes and call him Sir? Will they even say Andrew,

Certainly, he is not moving to suburbia, but to the royal family's extensive grounds at Sandringham.

In that place, he will be supplied by the monarch with one of the grace and favour houses and given some type of financial support.

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 sufficiently removed.

Unresolved Issues

This is not over. There are still documents in the custody of American legislators to be made public.

• Political Pressure: Could legislators request additional information
• Financial Investigation: Or examine the waste of taxpayer funds
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a police investigation into his actions

Maybe for the moment the reputational impact to the crown is contained. The message from the royal household was clearly that the stripping of titles was what the king, and notably other senior family members, sought.

A Shift in Position

An end to deception that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, notably, the concise statement showed evidently that the royals were aligning with the victim's narrative of occurrences.

Additionally, for the premiere occasion they finally showed concern for the survivors: "The measures are considered essential, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him."

Finally it is entitlement, self-seeking and inactivity that will kill the institution. In his folly, self-indulgence and greed, Andrew seems never to have grasped that truth.