Foolishness and Regal Arrogance Damaged Andrew, and It May Not Be Over Yet

The saga started with a single photograph, arguably the most consequential ever taken of a royal family member.

There stood the Earl of Inverness, arm-in-arm a teenage girl, while a companion grinned conspiratorially in the backdrop.

Absent that photograph, shot at a social event in 2001, few would have credited the allegations of a adolescent who said she was trafficked across the sea and obliged to have perfunctory sexual encounters with a member of the royal bloodline?

An odd, revealing gesture by someone who had openly asserted to have no known about her, asserted he could not have had relations with her, and yet paid a large amount of monarchical money to settle a protracted lawsuit.

Over a Decade of Disgrace

Against this backdrop, conversations of the monarchy acting swiftly to cut Andrew off are wide of the mark. This affair has endured for the better part of 15 years since that picture, and an additional image of Andrew walking congenially with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Arrogance: For what duration did his family members, maybe even his parents, know that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Questionable Associations: They must have known, if his aides and the police were doing their jobs, that he had some extremely unsavory friends given he publicly hosted them to royal residences.
• Fiscal Irresponsibility: If the household did not know about his sexual proclivities, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with taxpayer funds.

Trips were printed in public records: private aircraft transfers from the palace to a country club and back again in time for midday meal, exclusive air travel instead of regular transport, all for the convenience of "the travel enthusiast".

A Life of Privilege

Furthermore the arrogance which demanded respect when he entered a room or the extreme consciousness about his honorifics used on his letterheads in communication to his friends.

He avoided accountability while his parent, who strangely indulged him, was still living. The sovereign did at least strip him of royal responsibilities and honorary colonelcies in the wake of his catastrophic and, we now know, mendacious television interview six years ago.

Recent Developments

Just in the last two weeks that events progressed rapidly, following the issuance of biographical works giving more troubling details of his behavior and that of his companions.

Additional revelations have again exposed Andrew's thinking that he could escape lying about his relationship with a convicted criminal.

The public (and the journalists) were far ahead of the monarchy. There was nobody of any importance to speak up for him, a consequence of all those years of arrogance.

Monarchical Concerns

The wiser monarchical figures understood that. The one imperative 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 legacy of earlier rulers, showing they are valuable, responsible and reactive to their subjects.

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

Aftermath

Finally, the famously indecisive king was pushed further. There was no alternative. The royal household had lost control of the narrative.

Now it is the stripping of honorifics and the ongoing and lifetime social disgrace that will pain Andrew most deeply.

• Reduction: Demoted to just a private citizen
• Prior Instance: The first royal to forfeit his titles 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 actually come to pass.

What Lies Ahead

Will people he encounters still defer to him? Could they still slip up and call him Prince? Would they say Mr,

Naturally, he is not retiring to suburbia, but to the sovereign's extensive property at a royal residence.

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

It is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a token lease for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit far, but even so it may not be far enough.

Pending Matters

Matters remain unresolved. There are still documents in the possession of American legislators to be disclosed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Might parliament seek further action
• Fiscal Review: Or examine the misuse of taxpayer funds
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a criminal probe into his behavior

Possibly for the time being the harm to the monarchy to the crown is limited. The narrative from the institution was clearly that the removal of honorifics was what the monarch, and notably other senior royals, sought.

Changed Stance

An end to pretence that Andrew was acting willingly. And, remarkably, the brief communication showed clearly that the royals were aligning with the victim's narrative of occurrences.

Additionally, for the first time they finally showed concern for the survivors: "The measures are judged required, regardless of the fact that he maintains his innocence of the accusations against him."

Finally it is entitlement, selfishness and inactivity that will undermine the crown. In his folly, self-indulgence and venality, Andrew gives the impression never to have understood that reality.