Anne Reportedly ‘Came Close to Throttling’ Fergie After Scandal—the Princess Told the Ex-Duchess Exactly ‘What She Thought of Her’
Who gets along with whom is one of the things people are most curious about after a scandal. And the British royal family has had its share of those. And in the middle of a couple of those has been Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York and Andrew’s ex-wife. And it’s not just the scandals about her marriage and subsequent divorce from Andrew, either. No, Fergie has her own Jeffrey Epstein scandal, too.
All of this adds up to the fact that, at this point, Fergie’s relationship with pretty much everyone in the royal family seems to be irrevocably broken. But was it always so? According to royal biographer Andrew Lownie’s book, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, Fergie and Princess Anne never really got along. Or at least, they didn’t after Fergie’s infamous 1992 cheating scandal.
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Fergie, who started a relationship with American businessman John Bryan before she separated from Andrew in March 1992, was caught with Bryan at a private villa the couple rented in the south of France. According to Lownie, “a large trench had been dug within a hundred yards of the villa and pool,” in order to spy on them.
Among the photos published in the Mirror at the time were ones of “a topless Sarah rubbing sun cream on the head of her balding financial advisor,” pictures of Bryan sucking Fergie’s toes, and pictures of then two-year-old Princess Eugenie watching on as her mother and Bryan kissed. The worst part? Ferguson was at Balmoral at the time the photos were published, so she had to face the royal family right away.
Lownie writes that Ferguson “claimed she sat up all night drinking brandy” with royal nanny Alison Wardley, “breakfasted upstairs and let Andrew bring up the papers from breakfast.” Other versions insist that Ferguson “entered the breakfast room to find everyone reading the story and fled.” However, a guest who was there that day told Sarah’s biographer a different version.
And in this version, it was said “that the Princess Royal ‘came close to throttling’ Sarah” after seeing the photos, “and at dinner told her what she thought of her.” And it gets worse for Ferguson, as apparently, “There was not one voice raised against Anne” because everyone agreed.
The source also said, “Prince Andrew’s anger melted into sadness and he buried himself in the special reports compiled for The Queen, which she did not hesitate to let him read.”
But other sources claim the Queen called Ferguson early in the morning “to explain herself,” with one of the servants at Balmoral quoted by Lownie as saying that Ferguson “acted in the strangest way.”
The source added, “You would have thought she was the person wronged, as if she had every right to go on holiday with another man, kiss and cuddle him, and the only person who had behaved wrongly were the photographer and the editors who had published the pictures.”
