The King has left no room for misunderstanding and stripped his younger brother of all his titles. Photo / Getty Images
There will be a moment, in the near future, when the name of the Duke of York will be scrubbed out of existence.
In a humiliation visible for the history books, it will be crossed off the Peerage Roll and, with his alter egos of Prince and His Royal Highness, will not be heard in an official capacity again in his lifetime.
Prince Andrew becomes Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, and his downfall has reached its nadir.
The word unprecedented is overused in royal reporting. This, finally, is the definition.
It has taken Buckingham Palace some time to reach the decision. A halfway house solution of allowing Mr Mountbatten Windsor to voluntarily give up using his duke title did not cut the mustard.
Public ire focused on Royal Lodge, Andrew’s 30-room home – on which he was paying a peppercorn rent – and the questions kept on coming.
On Thursday night (UK time), after weeks of headlines, chat show debates and MPs demanding answers on Royal Lodge, “advanced discussions” at the palace reached their conclusion.
The King – who is not an unsympathetic man and has been assured by his brother of his innocence on all fronts – finally pressed the nuclear button.
Mountbatten Windsor will be packing his bags, extricating himself from his “cast-iron” lease at his current home, and moving into a small house on the Sandringham Estate.
The decision has not been taken lightly.
Andrew, behind the scenes, has been affected by the public pressure. A duty of care to him, even after all this, has been part of discussions.
The decision has needed “support from the wider family”, it is said. The Prince of Wales – naturally, as heir to the throne – has been involved, as have Charles and Andrew’s siblings, the children of the late Queen Elizabeth II.
Finally, royal sources admit, there have been “serious lapses of judgment” from Mountbatten Windsor, even if he denies all allegations.
And finally, years after Virginia Giuffre and other victims of Jeffrey Epstein spoke out about their experiences, the King and Queen have formally acknowledged the “victims and survivors” of abuse.
“Their majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse,” the palace said in a statement.
It will go some way, if not all the way, to answer the question of why they had not made that clear before.
That it has all got this far will pain the King. Those party to the details of discussions this week say he has been resolute, but listening to advice from all quarters.
It was not so long ago that the idea of removing Andrew’s titles seemed too difficult, too big a statement when he had not been convicted of anything by law.
When the Telegraph wrote that there was a mechanism to de-prince him, back in August, many cast doubt that it could, or would, ever come to pass.
Yet here we are. There is only so much, the King has signalled, that palace and public can tolerate.
For Andrew, for all his public bluster and robustness, this defenestration will sting. Few living royals put as much store by status and title as he – and now they are gone.
Where he was once associated with Falklands war heroics, with an era as an eligible bachelor (those tabloid titles of “Randy Andy” and “Air Miles Andy” are all that is left), he will now be remembered as the most disgraced royal of his generation, and several before that.
He has not been entirely cast out of the fold. The King will privately fund his housing from now on, in an effort to keep him out of further trouble.
There are plenty of technicalities still to work through – there are precedents for a prince title and the HRH style being removed, but not for all of this at once, with a house move to boot.
For an institution that is mythologised as ruthless – the survival of the monarchy is all, in the popular imagination – Buckingham Palace has taken its time to act.
It has now done so, decisively, and left no room for misunderstanding.
“These censures are deemed necessary,” the palace said, speaking for the King.
There have been years of scandal, weeks of questions, and days of negotiations. The King will hope that this, finally, is enough.
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