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

In the frame appeared the Earl of Inverness, with his arm around a teenage girl, while an associate smiled conspiratorially in the backdrop.

Lacking that image, taken at a social event in 2001, who would have believed the assertions of a young woman who stated she was moved across the Atlantic and obliged to have perfunctory intimate contact with a individual of the monarchy?

An odd, telling move by someone who had openly asserted to have no known about her, claimed he could never have had sex with her, and yet provided a large amount of monarchical resources to resolve a drawn-out court action.

Years of Scandal

In this context, talk of the royals acting firmly to distance themselves from Andrew are wide of the mark. This controversy has endured for the largest portion of 15 years since that picture, and another photo of Andrew walking congenially with a convicted sex offender surfaced.

• Hubris: For what duration did his family members, perhaps even his relatives, realize that Andrew was so self-entitled?
• Problematic Connections: They must have known, if his staff and the law enforcement were fulfilling their roles, that he had some highly questionable associates given he unabashedly welcomed them to estates.
• Financial Extravagance: If the household did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his overspending with public money.

Trips were listed in public records: helicopter travel from the royal residence to a country club and back again in time for midday meal, exclusive air travel instead of commercial flights, all for the benefit of "Airmiles Andy".

A Life of Privilege

Furthermore the presumption which expected deference when he appeared in a room or the supreme obsession about his designations used on his letterheads in communication to his friends.

He managed to escape consequences while his matriarch, who inexplicably pampered him, was still living. The sovereign did at least strip him of public duties and military positions in the consequence of his catastrophic and, we now know, mendacious media appearance six years ago.

Current Situation

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

More information have again revealed Andrew's thinking that he could avoid deceiving about his contact with a notorious figure.

People (and the journalists) were far more perceptive of the royal family. There was nobody of any significance to speak up for him, a outcome of all those years of arrogance.

Institutional Fears

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

They have spent the last 190 years trying to reverse the image of previous monarchs, demonstrating they are valuable, dutiful and responsive to their citizens.

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

Aftermath

Finally, the well-known indecisive monarch was prodded further. There was no alternative. The palace had lost control of the account.

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

• Downgrading: Reduced to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Past Example: The first royal to forfeit his designations in recent history
• Naval Career: Especially stinging given his duty in the Falklands war

He remains a constitutional officer, on paper able to substitute for the sovereign, and he is still in the succession to the crown, but not any of these will truly happen.

Coming Developments

Can persons he meets still defer to him? Might they still slip up and call him Sir? Will they even say Andrew,

Naturally, he is not withdrawing to a common area, but to the sovereign's large estate at Sandringham.

In that place, he will be supplied by the sovereign with one of the grace and favour houses and given some form of personal stipend.

This differs from his former home, where he paid a nominal rent for more than 20 years, and the area is a bit distant, but even so it may not be sufficiently removed.

Unresolved Issues

Matters remain unresolved. There are still records in the custody of American legislators to be made public.

• Parliamentary Interest: Could parliament seek further action
• Monetary Probe: Or scrutinize the misuse of state resources
• Legal Possibility: There may even be a police investigation into his actions

Possibly for the moment the reputational impact to the crown is contained. The narrative from the institution was clearly that the removal of honorifics was what the king, and especially other senior royals, desired.

Changed Stance

The cessation of illusion that Andrew was doing it voluntarily. And, significantly, the brief announcement showed plainly that the monarchy were siding with the victim's account of events.

Furthermore, for the first time they eventually showed consideration for the survivors: "The measures are judged required, notwithstanding the truth that he maintains his innocence of the claims against him."

In the end it is presumption, selfishness and inactivity that will destroy the monarchy. In his stupidity, self-gratification and venality, Andrew seems never to have grasped that reality.