Stupidity and Royal Self-Entitlement Ruined Andrew, and It Might Persist Yet

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

There stood the Duke of York, arm-in-arm a teenage girl, while an associate smiled suggestively in the rear.

Absent that image, taken at a party in 2001, few would have credited the allegations of a adolescent who stated she was moved across the Atlantic and obliged to have perfunctory sexual encounters with a member of the royal bloodline?

A strange, telling move by someone who had overtly claimed to have not known about her, claimed he could never have had relations with her, and yet paid a large amount of family funds to resolve a protracted court action.

A Long Period of Controversy

In this context, conversations of the royals acting swiftly to sever ties with Andrew are misguided. This scandal has endured for the majority of 15 years since that photograph, and an additional photo of Andrew ambling pleasantly with a disgraced financier came to light.

• Arrogance: To what extent did his family members, perhaps even his mother and father, understand that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have known, if his aides and the authorities were fulfilling their roles, that he had some highly questionable associates given he unabashedly invited them to palaces.
• Monetary Excess: If the monarchy did not know about his personal conduct, they certainly knew about his extravagance with state resources.

Travel were documented in public records: private aircraft transfers from the palace to a golf course and back again in time for lunch, chartered planes instead of scheduled services, all for the convenience of "the frequent flyer".

World of Deference

Additionally the arrogance which required subservience when he appeared in a space or the profound consciousness about his designations used on his correspondence in communication to his personal acquaintances.

He could get away with it while his matriarch, who unaccountably indulged him, was still surviving. The Queen did at least strip him of public duties and honorary colonelcies in the aftermath of his catastrophic and, it is now clear, deceptive media appearance six years ago.

Current Situation

Merely in the last fortnight that events progressed rapidly, following the publication of books giving more troubling details of his actions and that of his associates.

Further disclosures have again highlighted Andrew's belief that he could escape being untruthful about his contact with a disgraced individual.

People (and the journalists) were far more perceptive of the monarchy. There was no one of any consequence to defend him, a result of all those years of arrogance.

Royal Worries

The wiser monarchical figures understood that. The one imperative is to transfer the crown, if not as before at least whole and unblemished.

Over time the last 190 years trying to reverse the reputation of previous monarchs, proving they are useful, accountable and attentive to their citizens.

Andrew was putting all that in danger in an time when submission and discretion is no longer sufficient.

Aftermath

Eventually, the famously hesitant king was pressured additional. There was little choice. The palace had lost control of the story.

Now it is the loss of titles and the persistent and permanent personal shame that will hurt Andrew most deeply.

• Downgrading: Demoted to just a private citizen
• Historical Precedent: The primary monarch to forfeit his designations in contemporary era
• Armed Forces: Notably stinging given his role in the Falklands war

He is still a royal advisor, on paper able to stand in for the monarch, and he is still eighth in line to the monarchy, but not any of these will truly come to pass.

Future Prospects

Can persons he encounters still acknowledge him? Might they still slip up and call him Your Highness? Might they say Andrew,

Of course, he is not moving to a common area, but to the royal family's extensive property at a royal residence.

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

It is not his former home, where he paid a token lease for more than 20 years, and the county is a bit remote, but even so it may not be adequate distance.

Outstanding Concerns

The situation continues. There are still documents in the possession of US Congress to be revealed.

• Governmental Scrutiny: Might legislators demand more
• Financial Investigation: Or scrutinize the misuse of taxpayer funds
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a law enforcement inquiry into his actions

Perhaps for the time being the reputational impact to the institution is contained. The statement from the institution was clearly that the removal of titles was what the monarch, and especially other senior family members, wanted.

A Shift in Position

An end to illusion that Andrew was acting willingly. And, notably, the concise statement showed evidently that the royals were supporting the complainant's narrative of incidents.

Even more, for the premiere occasion they eventually showed regard for the survivors: "These actions are considered essential, despite the truth that he maintains his innocence of the accusations against him."

In the end it is entitlement, self-seeking and inactivity that will kill the institution. In his folly, self-gratification and corruption, Andrew appears never to have understood that lesson.