Foolishness and Monarchical Hubris Ruined Andrew, and It Could Continue Yet

This episode commenced with a isolated photograph, perhaps the most impactful ever snapped of a royal family member.

There stood the Baron Killyleagh, with his arm around a teenage girl, while another individual grinned suggestively in the rear.

Without that photograph, captured at a party in 2001, few would have credited the assertions of a teenager who said she was moved across the Atlantic and obliged to have cursory sexual encounters with a member of the monarchy?

A curious, revealing action by someone who had openly stated to have no known about her, claimed he could not have had sex with her, and yet provided millions of his mother's funds to resolve a drawn-out legal case.

Years of Disgrace

In this context, discussions of the royal family acting swiftly to sever ties with Andrew are inaccurate. This scandal has endured for the majority of 15 years since that picture, and a further image of Andrew ambling amiably with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Self-importance: For what duration did his family members, perhaps even his mother and father, know that Andrew was so arrogant?
• Questionable Associations: They must have understood, if his aides and the law enforcement were performing their duties, that he had some extremely unsavory associates given he openly welcomed them to royal residences.
• Financial Extravagance: If the household did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with public money.

Trips were listed in public records: chopper flights from the royal residence to a country club and back again in time for lunch, private flights instead of regular transport, all for the convenience of "the travel enthusiast".

A Life of Privilege

Then there was the entitlement which required deference when he walked into a space or the extreme awareness about his designations used on his letterheads in communication to his personal acquaintances.

He avoided accountability while his parent, who strangely indulged him, was still alive. The monarch did at least strip him of official roles and military positions in the consequence of his disastrous and, it is now clear, mendacious public statement six years ago.

Current Situation

Just in the last two weeks that events sped up, following the release of books giving more disturbing particulars of his actions and that of his connections.

Additional revelations have again highlighted Andrew's assumption that he could escape being untruthful about his relationship with a disgraced individual.

The public (and the media) were far in advance of the royals. There was not a single person of any significance to support him, a consequence of all those years of arrogance.

Royal Worries

The more astute royals realized that. The one imperative is to pass on the monarchy, if not as heretofore at least complete and unstained.

Over time the last 190 years trying to reverse the legacy of past sovereigns, showing they are valuable, accountable and reactive to their subjects.

He was placing all that in peril in an age when submission and secrecy is no longer enough.

Aftermath

Eventually, the notoriously uncertain monarch was pressured more. There was little choice. The institution had lost control of the story.

Currently the stripping of titles and the persistent and lifetime personal shame that will hurt Andrew the most.

• Downgrading: Reduced to just a private citizen
• Historical Precedent: The primary royal to forfeit his designations in recent history
• Naval Career: Especially stinging given his role in the Falklands war

He continues to be a royal advisor, in principle able to stand in for the king, and he is still in the lineage to the monarchy, but neither of these will actually come to pass.

Future Prospects

Do individuals he encounters still show respect to him? Will they still slip up and call him Your Highness? Might they say Mr,

Of course, he is not retiring to suburbia, but to the monarchy's large grounds at a royal residence.

At that location, he will be supplied by the monarch with one of the royal residences and given some sort of private allowance.

This is not his prior accommodation, where he paid a nominal rent for more than 20 years, and Norfolk is a bit distant, but even so it may not be far enough.

Pending Matters

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

• Parliamentary Interest: Could parliament demand more
• Financial Investigation: Or scrutinize the misuse of public money
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a police investigation into his conduct

Possibly for the moment the harm to the monarchy to the institution is restricted. The statement from the palace was plainly that the removal of designations was what the sovereign, and especially other senior monarchical figures, wanted.

Altered Approach

An end to deception that Andrew was acting willingly. And, notably, the concise statement showed evidently that the institution were siding with the victim's narrative of occurrences.

Additionally, for the initial instance they eventually showed regard for the victims: "The measures are judged required, notwithstanding the fact that he persists in refuting the allegations against him."

Ultimately it is arrogance, selfishness and indolence that will undermine the crown. In his foolishness, self-gratification and corruption, Andrew seems never to have learned that reality.