Meanwhile, the true crime drama about her assistant, Jane Andrews, who was jailed for murdering her lover, is playing out on ITV. The Lady<\/a> depicts a world of champagne-fuelled parties and excess that defined those years. Fergie, as she was affectionately known, loved a party \u2014 though her husband was teetotal.<\/p>\n Sarah christens a yacht competing in the Whitbread Round the World Race, 1988<\/p>\n ARTHUR EDWARDS\/THE SUN<\/p>\n Natalie Dormer as Sarah in The Lady<\/p>\n JONATHAN FORD\/ITV<\/p>\n When I met Kate, one of the coterie of well-to-do young women who worked for the duchess, my hope was that she could set up a meeting for me with Sarah. I wanted to know more about what had gone wrong in her marriage and how she saw her future. But, in those discreet and luxurious surroundings, it was soon obvious that there would be no such meeting. Even though her sister-in-law, Diana, had invited me for long, girlie chats at Kensington Palace, Kate told me that Fergie wasn\u2019t interested. <\/p>\n It was Diana who had got Sarah<\/a> and Andrew together. She and Sarah had known one another since their teenage years and already moved in similar circles, being fourth cousins with mothers who were at school together. Diana arranged for Fergie to be invited to Windsor Castle for Royal Ascot in 1985, and had ensured that her friend was seated next to Andrew at lunch. They hit it off straight away. <\/p>\n And this red-headed, bouncy ball of fun was also an immediate hit with the public and the press. \u201cWhat a breath of fresh air,\u201d we all cried. \u201cJust what the stuffy old monarchy needs!\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah and Diana at the Guard\u2019s Polo Club in Windsor, 1983<\/p>\n GEORGES DE KEERLE\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n Sarah looked so happy, so full of joy to find she\u2019d bagged a prince \u2014 a Falklands hero, and a handsome one at that. Perhaps we should have realised back then that acting like an exuberant, uncontrollable puppy would not sit well with palace life.<\/p>\n One of my first memories as a royal correspondent was standing outside the Yorks\u2019 house in 1988 reporting on her newly announced pregnancy. All, it seemed, was well in those first years of marriage. A new princess was on the way!<\/p>\n But, behind the scenes, as the tell-all book about her life as a royal later made clear, Sarah was lost and lonely. Her husband was away with the navy most of the time, and she felt like an outsider in the royal family.<\/p>\n It was in 1992, the Queen\u2019s famous annus horribilis, that it all began to unravel. I had been temporarily pulled off royal duties to help cover the general election. I was on the tour bus with Neil Kinnock and working long hours. I\u2019d just got into bed after a day on the road when the office rang.<\/p>\n \u201cJen, we need you in the office as soon as possible. The marriage is over, they\u2019re separating!\u201d<\/p>\n I knew by then there were problems with Charles and Diana, but it was a total shock to me that Andrew and Fergie were calling it quits. A dramatic couple of days followed, culminating with the Queen\u2019s press secretary, Charles Anson, giving an off-the-record briefing so critical of the duchess that one of my colleagues coined the phrase \u201cthe knives are out for Fergie\u201d.<\/p>\n Sarah and Princess Beatrice on a ski holiday in Switzerland, 1990<\/p>\n JULIAN PARKER\/UK PRESS<\/p>\n These were torrid times for the royal family, and indeed for the reporters who covered them. We were all buffeted from crisis to crisis, with hardly a moment to think. In August, pictures of Sarah, topless and having her toes sucked by her so-called financial adviser in the south of France, caused her to spiral almost out of control. On a flight back from Miami a few days later, journalists watched her knocking back champagne, throwing wet towels, peanuts and tissues around, and putting a sick bag over her head while making strange \u201ctelephone noises\u201d.<\/p>\n But as well as her estranged husband, Fergie still had one ally from her royal life: Diana. She, too, was now an outsider after her separation from Charles was announced at the end of 1992. But, as the princess told me during one of our cosy chats<\/a>, she thought of Fergie as a sister because they had \u201cgone through so much together\u201d. <\/p>\n It was, however, a volatile relationship, and they eventually fell out over a borrowed pair of shoes and claims that one of them had given the other a verruca.<\/p>\n Sarah and Diana on Derby day, 1987<\/p>\n JOHN ROGERS FOR THE TIMES<\/p>\n Perhaps we royal reporters should have guessed that the Yorks\u2019 marriage was doomed from the start. But we didn\u2019t know what a complex and damaged woman Fergie<\/a> was. Her book, My Story, when it was eventually published in 1996, did give some clues about why she was perhaps destined to fall repeatedly, and ultimately so disgracefully. <\/p>\n A child of a broken home (her mother had an affair with an Argentine polo player), she says she always had issues with abandonment and self-esteem. She compensated by striving to be the ultimate \u201cpleaser\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWhenever I went somewhere new, it wasn\u2019t enough for me just to smile and fit in like a normal person \u2026 I was the life of every party, the house comedian \u2014 good old Fergie! But, inside the laughter, dwelt my own worst critic: my hanging judge, the self-hating core of me. Inside, good old Fergie was dying.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah promotes My Story in New York, 1996<\/p>\n ED BAILEY\/AP<\/p>\n She describes her first meeting with the wider royal family at Sandringham as facing \u201cher firing squad\u201d. She was so nervous that she tripped over a piano leg, spilt her drink and kicked one of the corgis. Shocked as she was by the plunge into public life, she admits she rather enjoyed the media attention. She believed the press when they wrote that \u201cfun Fergie would sponge away the mildew of the royal family like some Mary Poppins crossed with Cinderella\u201d. And yet her \u201cinner voices\u201c never let up. As she stood on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, those voices whispered in her ear: \u201cHas anyone noticed? I don\u2019t really belong here?\u201d<\/p>\n And the truth is, she probably didn\u2019t. Seduced first by a prince, and then by the glamour and riches of royal life, Sarah was sorely disappointed when she was confronted with reality. Her husband was in the navy and was hardly ever home. She found herself living a lonely life in the rather dismal surroundings of Andrew<\/a>\u2019s palace apartment. In her gushing, overdramatic way, she saw her existence as something of a tragic fairytale. She writes that she always knew the clock would strike twelve and she would be seen for what she was: \u201cunworthy, unattractive, unaccomplished. And finally, logically, undone\u201d. You have to ask why she wasted money on fortune tellers when she could predict the future so well for herself?<\/p>\n![\"Duchess](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/8d7304e0-6586-45a9-99ff-cea62b7751d9.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Natalie](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/d67168fa-a305-4792-a361-e2a1dfa06953.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Diana,](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/01773ecd-4aa3-4c6e-91c7-f194b5d9a8a0.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Sarah,](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/6466b97a-9a66-4572-ae81-4ec99d32e72f.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Princess](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/c2ffac6c-fd3b-4912-9ed4-73044d6fd251.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Sarah](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/2a299156-f150-48fe-a933-063fa2b1bfbb.jpg\")
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![\"Sarah](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/3d683b00-1277-4eac-8fff-f1f0afde9f12.jpg\")
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