Nearly four decades have passed since Sarah Ferguson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor married at Westminster Abbey in London, in a ceremony remembered as one of the defining royal spectacles of the 1980s.
More than 50 million viewers around the world watched as Fergie made her way down the aisle to her beaming prince, dressed in naval uniform, before the newlyweds sealed the moment with a balcony kiss at Buckingham Palace as crowds roared below.
But the fairytale image did not last. Just six years after that lavish wedding, Sarah and Andrew’s marriage effectively reached its breaking point, with news of their divorce emerging in May 1992.
Although their relationship had been shadowed by scandal and allegations of infidelity, Sarah later insisted they had emerged with an unusually strong bond, calling them “the happiest divorced couple in the world” and praising the family unity they maintained with their daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.
“July 23, 1986, was the happiest day of my life. Andrew is the best man I know. What he does for Britain is incredible; no one knows how hard he works for his country,” the former Duchess of York told the Daily Mail in 2018.
“My duty is to him. I am so proud of him. I stand by him and always will. The way we are is our fairy tale. Although we are not a couple, we really believe in each other. The Yorks are a united family.”
Yet even as Fergie, now 66, continued to speak warmly and loyally about her former husband many years after their split, scrutiny over what their marriage was really like never fully disappeared.
Royal author Andrew Lownie, whose bestselling book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York examines the couple’s history, has suggested that Fergie’s insistence on viewing her marriage to the disgraced former Duke in purely positive terms has long “rang hollow.”
‘It had been a convenient cover and helped generate positive media headlines but the reality is the couple very quickly after their wedding were having affairs,’ Mr Lownie told The Daily Mail.
‘The only reason Ferguson continued to cadge accommodation from him was that it saved her money and burnished her royal connections and her money-making activities.’
It has been almost 40 years since Sarah Ferguson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor tied the knot at London’s Westminster Abbey in one of the most show-stopping spectacles of the 1980s
More than 50 million people across the globe tuned in to watch Fergie walk down the aisle to meet her smiling prince in his naval uniform, while the pair shared a romantic kiss on the Buckingham Palace balcony against the backdrop of cheering crowds
Andrew and Fergie, who were first introduced to each other in June 1985 by Princess Diana, had a whirlwind romance that saw them become engaged in February 1986 and later marry at London’s Westminster Abbey that July.
However, while their relationship initially seemed like nothing short of a fairytale, it wasn’t long before cracks began to emerge.
During her second pregnancy with Princess Eugenie, Fergie began a secret affair with American businessman Steve Wyatt, son of socialite Lynn Wyatt, who she was first introduced to at a British festival in Houston in November 1989.
Revealing the details of their first meeting, Mr Lownie wrote: ‘Sarah, bored and lonely, was attracted to Wyatt, then in his late thirties, with his thatch of brown hair, soft blue eyes and rich hypnotic voice, and shared interest in alternative medicine.’
Meanwhile, one individual who was present for the meeting between the two, recalled: ‘It was obvious she was enormously attracted to him… There was a clear chemistry between them.’
David Leigh, co-author of Duchess of York: Uncensored has even alleged that Mr Wyatt, rather than Andrew, was the ‘love of her life’ and that she became ‘head over heels’ infatuated with the businessman.
Then, in January 1992, a tranche of 120 images of Sarah and Wyatt on holiday in Morocco was leaked to the press.
While seemingly innocent, the snaps raised serious questions about Fergie and Wyatt’s friendship – especially after one picture showed then-one-year-old Princess Beatrice sitting on the businessman’s knee.
‘It had been convenient cover and helped generate positive media headlines but the reality is the couple very quickly after their wedding were having affairs,’ Mr Lownie told the Daily Mail
According to royal author Andrew Lownie, writer of bestselling book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, Fergie’s claims that her and the disgraced ex-Duke’s marriage was unequivocally positive ‘ever rang hollow’
The Queen acted swiftly and ordered Fergie to sever all ties with Wyatt in a bid to contain the damage from the photos.
However, Fergie’s decision to ‘ignore’ the ‘royal warning’ eventually prompted the urgent family summit at Sandringham, spearheaded by the rather concerned sovereign.
Just three days after the family summit, Andrew and Fergie returned to Sandringham to inform the Queen that their marriage was over.
On March 19, 1992, they publicly announced their separation.
Yet it wasn’t just Sarah that struggled to remain loyal during their marriage, with Andrew also said to have slept with ‘a dozen women’ within just a year of marrying the duchess.
According to Andrew’s former driver, the former duke slept with ‘more than a dozen women before their first anniversary’.
‘Sarah discovered Andrew wasn’t coming home on some of his leave. He was going elsewhere – and this just drove her crazy. She didn’t like the fact she was a shore widow, and to discover she was shore-widowed intentionally really hurt,’ an insider told Mr Lownie.
Yet it was Fergie’s love life that was continually played out in the public life, with further attention drawn to the former Duchess in 1991 when Fergie and her ‘financial advisor’ John Bryan flew by private jet to the French Riviera.
Lying on a sunbed in St Tropez, Mr Bryan was pictured kissing and sucking Fergie’s toes under the damning headline: ‘Fergie’s Stolen Kisses: Truth About the Duchess and the Texas Millionaire’.
According to Mr Lownie, while Fergie ‘steadfastly repeated the mantra at interviews over the years that her wedding was the best day of her life – in fact she was annoyed she was made to feel a bit player – and Andrew was a great man.
When Andrew, 66, was stripped of his prince title in October after being caught lying over his involvement with billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, intrigued royal onlookers were curious whether Fergie would stand by her disgraced former husband
He added: ‘Andrew was more direct telling her to remember that he was a prince first, a naval officer second and a husband third.’
When Andrew, 66, was stripped of his prince title in October after being caught lying over his involvement with billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, intrigued royal onlookers were curious whether Fergie would stand by her disgraced former husband.
Her future was then plunged into further uncertainty when Andrew was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office and forced to vacate Windsor’s Royal Lodge, where she was still living alongside Andrew despite their split.
Rather than standing by her husband, Andrew and Fergie are understood to have established a greater distance between them.
While the former prince has relocated to Sandringham’s Marsh Farm, Fergie has been spotted all over the globe – including at a £2,000-a-night ski lodge in the Alps.
Fergie dramatically disappeared from view amid the ongoing fallout from her links to Jeffrey Epstein and a series of toe-curling, sycophantic emails she sent to him even after he was jailed for child prostitution offences.
A source told The Sun that Fergie had been ‘keeping an incredibly low profile’ in the Alps, as she ‘clearly’ wanted to keep out of public view for the foreseeable.
‘Her choice of outfit when she popped out was obviously carefully chosen to help her avoid being recognised,’ they added.
Fergie was understood to be making her own living arrangements; however, in January, she had yet to find a permanent property as she was in the midst of a ‘housing crisis’, as her children could not offer her a home.
And while Andrew prepared to move into Wood Farm, and then subsequently Marsh Farm, in Sandringham, the 66-year-old would ‘not be moving in’, as she wanted to stay in the Windsor area.
At the time, she was said to be in a ‘fragile’ state over her fall from grace, telling friends her recent travails were ‘not good for my mental health’.
Currently, the former duchess is rumoured to be placing ‘false breadcrumbs’ in a bid to stay under the radar.
According to royal experts, Andrew and Fergie’s desire to separate proves their living arrangement at Royal Lodge has simply been ‘lucrative’ for one another, declaring: ‘The cover is blown.’
Richard Fitzwilliams previously told the Daily Mail: ‘The relationship between them, as I’ve always seen, it’s symbiotic in a sense. Remember the fake Sheikh scandal when Sarah Ferguson was trying to sell access to Andrew for £500,000?
‘It’s lucrative for both of them to be together. The point is that this has been an arrangement of convenience to enable them to live at a certain level.
‘They’ve kept that facade up very well. My feeling is that it was because they are extremely greedy. I think the problem was they desired a certain lifestyle – and this was the main way to get it.
‘This arrangement has gone on since 2008 because it was mutually advantageous, but the point is… she always has particularly traded on being the world’s happiest divorced couple.’
The royal expert added: ‘This was the couple who, Sarah Ferguson boasted, were the “happiest divorced couple in the world”. It seems they now want to separate. The reason is clearly that what made them perfect for each other after divorce and subsequent scandals and debts, was that they were both greedy and entitled.
‘Now this cover is blown, they want to live apart in two homes. The world can clearly see that the previous arrangement was designed to maximise the benefit of Andrew’s public life for them privately.’
