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

In the frame appeared the Baron Killyleagh, arm-in-arm a female youth, while an associate beamed knowingly in the backdrop.

Lacking that snapshot, captured at a gathering in 2001, few would have credited the claims of a young woman who declared she was moved across the ocean and forced to have brief intimate contact with a individual of the royal bloodline?

A strange, indicative move by someone who had overtly claimed to have never heard of her, asserted he could not have had sex with her, and yet handed over a substantial sum of his mother's funds to avert a long-delayed lawsuit.

Over a Decade of Scandal

Considering this, talk of the royal family acting firmly to cut Andrew off are inaccurate. This affair has endured for the better part of 15 years since that image, and an additional photo of Andrew ambling congenially with a convicted sex offender came to light.

• Hubris: How long did his brothers and sisters, possibly even his parents, know that Andrew was so presumptuous?
• Dubious Friendships: They must have known, if his staff and the law enforcement were fulfilling their roles, that he had some highly questionable friends given he publicly welcomed them to royal residences.
• Financial Extravagance: If the family did not know about his intimate behaviors, they certainly knew about his wastefulness with state resources.

Travel were documented in official documents: chopper transfers from the palace to a golf course and back again in time for dining, private flights instead of commercial flights, all for the benefit of "the travel enthusiast".

A Life of Privilege

Then there was the entitlement which expected deference when he entered a room or the profound consciousness about his honorifics used on his correspondence in communication to his friends.

He could get away with it while his mother, who unaccountably spoiled him, was still alive. The sovereign did at least remove him of public duties and ceremonial ranks in the wake of his disastrous and, it is now clear, untruthful public statement six years ago.

Current Situation

It was only in the last 14 days that events progressed rapidly, following the release of accounts giving more troubling particulars of his behavior and that of his associates.

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

The public (and the media) were far more perceptive of the royals. There was not a single person of any significance to speak up for him, a result of all those years of arrogance.

Monarchical Concerns

The wiser monarchical figures understood that. The key objective is to transfer the monarchy, if not as previously at least whole and unblemished.

Over time the last 190 years trying to overcome the image of past sovereigns, showing they are beneficial, dutiful and attentive to their citizens.

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

The Fallout

Eventually, the notoriously uncertain sovereign was prodded further. There was little choice. The royal household had surrendered command of the narrative.

Now it is the stripping of honorifics and the continued and permanent public humiliation that will afflict Andrew most deeply.

• Demotion: Demoted to just Mr Mountbatten-Windsor
• Prior Instance: The first member to forfeit his designations in contemporary era
• Armed Forces: Particularly painful given his role in the engagement

He continues to be a counsellor of state, on paper able to act for the sovereign, and he is still eighth in line to the monarchy, but neither of these will truly come to pass.

Coming Developments

Do individuals he encounters still defer to him? Could they still forget themselves and call him Sir? Might they say Sir,

Of course, he is not moving to an ordinary town, but to the sovereign's vast estate at Sandringham.

At that location, he will be supplied by the sovereign with one of the estate properties and given some sort of financial support.

This differs from his previous residence, where he paid a token lease for more than 20 years, and Norfolk 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 hands of overseas authorities to be disclosed.

• Parliamentary Interest: Will parliament request additional information
• Monetary Probe: Or scrutinize the misuse of state resources
• Judicial Potential: There may even be a criminal probe into his behavior

Maybe for the present the harm to the monarchy to the institution is limited. The message from the institution was clearly that the stripping of titles was what the king, and especially other senior royals, desired.

Altered Approach

No more deception that Andrew was making the choice himself. And, remarkably, the concise statement showed plainly that the institution were siding with the complainant's account of incidents.

Even more, for the first time they finally showed regard for the affected individuals: "The censures are considered essential, notwithstanding the reality that he persists in refuting the accusations against him."

Finally it is presumption, self-seeking and laziness that will destroy the institution. In his stupidity, self-gratification and corruption, Andrew gives the impression never to have learned that truth.