Princess Anne Was on the Brink of ‘Throttling’ Sarah Ferguson After Photo Scandal, Reveals Author
A new account describes the Princess Royal’s fury as Sarah Ferguson returned to Balmoral amid the crisis.
Princess Anne is often seen as the last member of the royal family who would ever lose her temper. Yet even she reached her limit during one of the monarchy’s most notorious scandals in the 1990s. A new account claims that the usually steady and straightforward Princess Royal was pushed so far by the fallout of the Fergie scandal that she came “close to throttling” her sister-in-law. Author Andrew Lownie revisits the episode in his book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York. The controversy erupted in 1992 when Sarah Ferguson, who was separated from former Prince Andrew at the time, was photographed on holiday in the south of France with American 'financial advisor' John Bryan. The photos, including the now infamous toe-sucking images, dominated front pages around the world and jolted a family already exhausted by a string of public embarrassments.
And according to Lownie, what particularly grated Princess Anne was not the photographs, but Fergie’s casual response to them. Anne, known for her straightforward nature, was reportedly furious that Sarah had allowed herself to fall into a situation that managed to be an embarrassment ot the family so publicly. Lownie wrote that the late Queen’s eldest daughter was on the brink of 'throttling' Sarah as the fallout unfolded. This was five months after the couple had announced their separation in March 1992, and then officially announced their decision to divorce in May 1996.
Ferguson, in a bid to apparently manage the crisis, travelled to Balmoral to be with Andrew and the rest of the royals in the aftermath of the holiday. But her arrival only intensified the discomfort. Lownie describes a moment that has since become part of the lore. Ferguson was walking into the breakfast room to see her in-laws sitting over newspapers splashed with the incriminating photographs. And he wrote. “She entered the breakfast room to find everyone reading the story and fled.”
Another account included in the book was from somebody present, and they narrated it to Ferguson’s biographer, Chris Hutchins. The narration was that Princess Anne “came close to throttling” Fergie and didn’t hold back later at dinner. Anne, it was claimed, made her feelings crystal clear, and “there was not one voice raised against Anne.” Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, meanwhile, reacted differently. His anger reportedly softened into sadness, leaving him to bury himself in the special reports compiled for the Queen. Lownie noted that the late Queen “did not hesitate to let him read” those documents.
Adding to the tension was how Ferguson reportedly behaved during her time at Balmoral. A servant who witnessed the fallout told Lownie that Fergie “acted in the strangest way.” The staff member claimed she behaved almost as if she were the injured party, saying, “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 of the newspapers who had published the pictures.”
