The late Queen called 1992 her “annus horribilis”, her dreadful year. Three of her children’s marriages were publicly breaking up, and then in November a fire tore through Windsor Castle, causing damage which took five years to repair. There was worse to come later in the decade, reputation-wise: the fallout from the death of Diana necessitated considerable efforts to gently update the monarch’s restrained and reticent image for a more demonstrative and emotional new era.

The Firm effectively rebuilt its public image in the next couple of decades, helped along by capable and level-headed new additions such as Sophie Rhys-Jones and Catherine Middleton. But recent years have seen considerable new challenges. The death of Elizabeth II after 70 years on the throne symbolised the fading of a particular idea of Britain. In 2024 both the King and the Princess of Wales battled cancer, and the Harry and Meghan saga still rumbles on, five years after the pair headed for California.

Then of course there is Prince Andrew. News this week that the now former Duke of York has relinquished his royal titles comes as no surprise.

Andrew had a good start to public life, flying helicopters in combat in the Falklands aged just 22, and pursuing a fairly normal and mildly distinguished naval career in the subsequent decades. But his post-Navy role as a trade envoy saw allegations of closeness to unsavoury characters, and use of official trips for personal enjoyment, and then in 2014 he was named as an associate of Jeffrey Epstein and accused of sexual contact with an underage girl, Virginia Giuffre, whose posthumous memoir will be published tomorrow. In it, there are reportedly more accusations against Andrew.

Ever since then both Andrew and the royals have been attempting to manage the fallout, with limited success, and he has gradually disappeared from public roles. The late Queen removed his honorary military associations and certain charitable patronages in 2020. Now Charles has apparently insisted that Andrew no longer use any of his titles and honours.

This suggests that the King knows he may need to be ruthless about protecting the royal family’s reputation. No one really cares about divorces any more, and the Sussex Wars seem to have been successfully weathered — helped, one imagines, by the various self-inflicted PR mishaps of Harry and Meghan. But the continuing allegations and rumours about Andrew’s involvement in the sexual exploitation of minors are a very different kind of problem. A King who has already expressed his desire for a more down-to-earth royal establishment can hardly be expected to let the situation fester.

The popularity enjoyed by the monarchy in the first decades of this century may be starting to fade. At the time of the Platinum Jubilee, one poll found that only 62% of respondents were firmly pro-monarchy, down from 75% in 2012, a decrease of more than 10 percentage points in the previous decade. That number fell to less than a third in the 18-24 age group.

Demographic transformation, and cultural changes — notably the decline of CofE observance and the disappearance of the hereditary principle from almost all other areas of public life — may push that number down still further. What’s more, some traditionally pro-monarchy sections of society have been alienated by the Firm’s apparent embrace of Tony Blair’s constitutional changes to the Lords and the peerage system.

It is perhaps for the best, then, that Andrew be firmly ushered off the stage.

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Niall Gooch is a public sector worker and occasional writer who lives in Kent.

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