There is one title Andrew still has left, and now its days are being counted. The City of London Corporation is preparing a mechanism to strip him of the freedom of the city - a title he inherited from his father and did not earn with a single day of work. The mechanism has to be approved before October. That is how carefully they move when something has to be taken from a man everyone else has already dropped.

British media report that the legal opinions on the case are already written. So this is not an impulsive decision after some fresh scandal, but a cold administrative procedure. Somebody sat down, opened the file and established that what has been awarded automatically for centuries can also be taken back - a route just has to be invented.

That same week Andrew also appears in court. On 29 July, by video link, he gives evidence to Westminster Magistrates' Court about an assault that took place in early May near Marsh Farm in Sandringham. According to the charge, a man named Alex Jenkinson, 39, ran at him while he was walking the dogs. Andrew fled to his vehicle. Jenkinson has been charged and is banned from coming within 500 metres of royal estates.

The road to this point is familiar. After the revelations linked to the Epstein case, Charles III stripped him of his titles and moved him out of Royal Lodge. On his 66th birthday he was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. The man who for decades was a prince, a duke and a representative of the crown is today Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor - a name with nothing at all in front of it.

The most telling detail has nothing to do with the court. His daughter, Princess Eugenie, asked him and Sarah Ferguson to postpone their hospital visit after the birth of her third child - to avoid a media crush. When your own family has to calculate when it is safe to see you so you do not ruin their best week, the sentence is no longer being handed down by a court or a crown.

The question that remains is not whether the freedom of the city will be taken too. The question is why the institutions needed so long. Every step - stripping the titles, the eviction, the arrest, and now the civic honour - arrives after all the facts are already out, never before. The protection lasted decades; the clearing-up is happening in instalments, at a pace that waits each time for one more document to surface.