How the Royal Family’s 'Mistakes' With Diana and Fergie Changed the Monarchy
EXCLUSIVE: Esteemed royal biographer Ingrid Seward suggests the experiences of both Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson helped change how future royal wives were prepared.
THE Royal Family may have 'learned lessons' from the early experiences of Princess Diana and Fergie.
According to expert Ingrid Seward, the monarchy subsequently changed the way women were first introduced to life inside the gilded institution. Both Diana and Sarah Ferguson faced highly reported challenges when they first married into the family, with both of their respective relationships engulfed in huge scandals and ending in sensational divorces.
But according to royal biographer Ingrid Seward, author of Catherine & Diana: The inside story of how the Princesses of Wales shaped the modern monarchy, the Royal Family seemed to change protocol about prospectives wives.
Speaking exclusively on the Royal Observer’s Palace Unfiltered, Seward pointed to Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, as an important example of how the institution changed its approach. As Seward stated, Queen Elizabeth II did something 'unusual' when Sophie prepared to marry Prince Edward, as she stated: "The next sort of incumbent to come along in a way was Sophie, Sophie and Edward, and the Queen took the very unusual step of inviting Sophie to live at Buckingham Palace, so she could get used to the whole royal world."
Seward also explained that both Diana and Fergie wished they had more time to acclimatise to the unique surroundings of life within the Institution. She told the Royal Observer: "I remember Fergie and Diana saying to me, 'You know, I wish we'd had this. It would have helped us hugely if we could have lived there for a bit and got used to it before, you know, we were actually committed to our marriages'."
When asked directly whether Sophie's experience represented the Palace learning from mistakes made with Diana and Fergie, Seward replied: “I think it absolutely is.” For the Late Queen, Seward suggested, even permitting the arrangement required some adaptation as the Christian faith was central to her life, and Seward noted how unusual it was for her to have an unmarried couple living beneath her roof.
“I think this was something the Queen suggested because it could only come for the Queen to have an unmarried couple living under her roof. But I think ... for all we know, it might have been Prince Philip,” Seward added of the idea. “These ideas usually came from him, but certainly it helped Sophie hugely.”
In her book, Seward writes about Diana's short courtship with Charles, suggesting they met only 13 times before they were married. By contrast, she writes how Catherine knew William for a number of years before they were eventually married. The couple met at the University of St Andrews, and they developed a friendship before becoming romantically involved.
Seward believes that the opportunity to experience adulthood together before their 2011 wedding was 'beneficial' to Catherine and provided a foundation for the partnership they have today. “They were friends first,” she told The Royal Observer. Seward recalled the couple's determination to approach royal life together, saying Catherine's position was effectively: “I will only take it on if you take it on with me, and we'll do it together.”
She added: “They are very much a unit. Although they do a lot of things separately, when they're together, they're very much a unit, and they're very sort of touchy-feely together, and you feel that they are a fantastic team.
For more than a decade, Catherine was known as the Duchess of Cambridge, while Queen Elizabeth II remained on the throne. Seward contrasted that lengthy introduction with Diana's experience, suggesting that Catherine had something her predecessor simply had not been afforded. "Catherine had so much longer to prepare herself than Diana did," Seward emphasised to the Royal Observer. "She had years."
Further discussing William and Catherine's years together, Seward suggested the Queen was “actually quite in agreement that this was a good idea” after the couple had spent their university years together and later shared a farmhouse with friends.
She added: "And the Queen was actually quite in agreement that this was a good idea because they'd been together for the whole [of] the university period, and then they moved into a farmhouse with some friends. So it wasn't thrown in her face; let's say it was done with a certain amount of subtlety."
