WAS it £7.5 million, £10 million, £12 million, or more? Estimates of how much Prince Andrew will have to pay to settle the sexual assault lawsuit brought against him by Virginia Giuffre go up and up by the day.

Though there was no agreement on what the final bill will be – the figure is confidential – the general consensus was clear: settling was the least worst case scenario for the House of Windsor, which can now draw a line under the matter and carry on planning the Queen’s platinum jubilee celebrations.

Normally you would bet on The Firm getting back to business as quickly as possible, but I’m not sure this time.

Can Prince Andrew be sealed off from the rest of the institution, encased in concrete like some royal Chernobyl, to do no more harm to the monarchy's reputation? Or has the palace read the situation and the times wrongly? It would not be the first occasion.

Certainly there is no salvaging the prince’s reputation. He and his legal team and assorted advisers sought to bully Ms Giuffre, a victim of sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein, into dropping the case. They were more than happy to destroy her to save the prince, using every low trick in the book, even hiding behind a New York tabloid’s description of her as if it was expert opinion.

READ MORE: Out of court settlement reached

Only last month the prince was said to be “demanding” his day in court. In truth it was all over for Andrew, bar the shouting of his expensive lawyers, as soon as the producer said “cut” on his Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis in November 2019.

In it, he denied ever having met Ms Roberts, as she then was. When confronted with a photo of him, with Ms Roberts, in Ghislaine Maxwell’s London home, he said he had “absolutely no memory of that photograph ever being taken”.

He went on to suggest the picture was fake. Imagine the brass neck it took to do that. That may be giving him too much credit; perhaps sheer stupidity carried him along, barging doubt out of the way at every turn.

Either way, he came across as as arrogant and uncaring, showing no sympathy for Epstein’s victims. He was a man who flitted in and out of Epstein’s homes, never noticing anything untoward. People wandered around, he did not know who they were, but wasn’t that just normal?

Given the opportunity to condemn Epstein, a convicted paedophile, he could not even do that, instead burbling on about how much he had learned from knowing him.

The prince was his own worst advocate. Yet where was the rest of the royal family and their ranks of advisers in all of this? The story broke in February 2011 when the Mail on Sunday ran an interview with Ms Roberts. Alongside it was the photo of the prince, Maxwell and Ms Roberts.

Weeks, months, and years passed, with nothing happening. Life for the prince, with all its privileges, carried on as normal.

The Newsnight interview did have consequences in as much the prince all but vanished from public life for a time afterwards. Yet that was that. It was not until January 2022 – another two years later – that he was stripped of his titles and patronages. Only when the prospect loomed of Andrew having to give evidence under oath did the palace act decisively. Had Ms Giuffre not fought on, the prince would still have his titles.

In the end it fell to one young woman, with the help of legal counsel, to take on the might of the British establishment, and it is something of a miracle that she got so far.

READ MORE: R&A membership relinquished

One thing you can say about The Firm is that they are ruthless in protecting their own interests. But if needs must, they bend. We saw this after the death of Princess Diana when, for a few strange days one summer, public criticism of the monarchy reached levels never seen before, at least in England.

When the royals finally caught up with the mood in the country they acted quickly, returning to London from Scotland. They inspected some of the tributes to Diana. They wore their grief in public.

Looking at the coverage then, this was seen as a significant moment in the royal family’s relationship with the public. To use the phrase now fashionable in politics, the royals “got it”.

Yet if we know anything after the Andrew debacle it is that nothing has changed. There is no more transparency than there was then. We are now in the ridiculous position, 24 hours on from the prince settling the claim, of not knowing who will be paying the money. At the very least it should be made clear that not a penny of it is coming from the public purse.

Among the many who have paid tribute to Ms Giuffre is Lisa Bloom, a lawyer representing some of Epstein’s victims. She called it a “monumental win” for Ms Giuffre and “for everyday people … standing up against the rich and powerful”.

Ms Giuffre has shown extraordinary courage and determination. It has been said that she might not have got this far, or anywhere at all, if it had not been for the #MeToo movement changing attitudes and demanding women be heard.

Equally, a person who wanted to follow Ms Giuffre’s lead might look at how long it took her to get anywhere, and how many obstacles were placed in her way, and decide not to proceed. For every person who successfully navigates the system there are countless other voices, all over the world, still going unheard.

Only Ms Guiffre knows what this fight has cost her, emotionally and in other ways. Ultimately, she has not achieved what she said she wanted, her day in court. The case was settled, it was not tried, and while people will come to their own conclusions we still do not know what happened. Given the seriousness of the allegations, all denied by the prince, that is a pretty extraordinary situation in itself.

This is the end of the matter as far as this case and these two parties are concerned. But any notion that the institution of monarchy can sail on from this untouched is ridiculous. Too much daylight has been let in on the “magic” for that to be so. An institution that seemed as though it could survive any scandal has been shown to be vulnerable. No amount of flag waving can take that away.