FERGIE: Right Royal Fuss!

BY PETER KURTH

Note: This article's text is reproduced exactly as printed in "Cosmopolitan" in July 1993]

Randy Andy thought she was dandy -- until he glimpsed the whole (topless!) picture. Here, the scandalous tale of a party girl who flouted palace protocol and became “Duchess of Yuck.”

Suppose you were a bright, attractive, reckless redhead who married a royal prince -- and he turned into a toad the minute you got him home.

Or from another perspective: Suppose you were the favorite son of the Queen of England, who fell in love with a bright, attractive, reckless redhead and discovered after you married her that she was a little more reckless than you thought (and not quite as bright).

Either way, you'd have a big problem on your hands. Just ask Sarah Ferguson Windsor, or as she is more popularly known, Fergie -- Duchess of York, estranged wife of Britain's Prince Andrew -- the woman all England, at the moment, positively loves to hate. Granted, over the last few years, the popularity of Queen Elizabeth II and her whole family has hit an all-time low: Castles have burned, other royal marriages have unraveled, and ordinary Brits, for the first time in more than a century, are seriously questioning the value of the monarchy. Still, Fergie's tarnished image is the saddest of the lot. With consistent vitriol, she's attacked in the tabloids as a tramp and an adventuress. She's been denounced on the floor of the House of Commons. She's persona non grata at the tonier clubs and country houses, and should the British monarchy ever collapse, you can be sure she'll get her full share of the blame.

Technically speaking, because her husband is only fourth in line to the throne, Fergie's escapades are far less troubling to the crown than those of her sister-in-law, Princess Diana. Nonetheless, it's Fergie, not Diana, who's been tossed to the wolves by the powers-that-be. It's the Duchess, not the Princess, whose reputation will never recover from the royal scandals of the past two years.

Why? Well, figure it out yourself: When you think about Diana, do you really associate her with clandestine love affairs, suicide attempts, bulimic binges, and temper tantrums? Do you get the impression of a whacked-out princess who can't live up to the burdens of state? You do not. Rather, you think of her in a string of superlatives. You think she's gorgeous. You hope she'll come out on top.

But Fergie's another story. Fergie's a royal mess. Ever since the British population woke up one morning and saw those pictures in the newspapers (you know the ones I mean: photos of a topless Fergie, looking all too unfortunately like a beached white whale, vacationing in the South of France, her toes being sucked by her "financial advisor" while her children looked on from the pool), ever since Prince Andrew -- so the story goes -- saw those same pictures and chased the wayward Duchess down the halls and out the doors of Balmoral Castle, waving his golf clubs and screaming that she never come back, it's been open season on Sarah Ferguson. She's become a kind of royal spittoon, "the fat white woman nobody loves," according to the London Evening Standard, and the one member of the royal family whom the press feels free to attack, no holds barred. She's been called the Red Menace of Windsor Castle and the Duchess of Yuck. According to a friend of mine in London, she's "the worst thing to happen to the British royal family since Wallis Warfield Simpson."

As a reporter and biographer, I've been covering the international royal scene for the better part of twenty years -- and I can't remember a time when any other member of the royal family has been regarded with such open contempt and disrespect. A titled woman I know in Scotland -- a "Lady" of the realm whose family is close to the Queen -- nearly spat out her tea (most unladylike) when I recently mentioned Fergie's name over biscuits and scones. "That creature!” my hostess exclaimed, rolling her eyes and smacking her brow with the palm of her hand. I half expected her to call for the smelling salts: "It's Nell Gwynn all over again!"

Nell Gwynn, for those who don't know, was a London streetwalker and comedy actress in the 17^th century -- "a bawdy, merry slut," said the diarist Samuel Pepys -- who became the mistress of King Charles II and bore him two illegitimate children. A lot of her descendants are still roaming around the stately homes of England (they're dukes and duchesses now), but this is something people overlook when they start knocking Fergie. They also overlook that Nell Gwynn was enormously popular in her time, an authentic heroine of the people, a lusty, busty, raucous wisecracker with a penchant for pinching bums and offending dignitaries -- the very qualities Fergie herself was prized for when, in 1986, she first emerged as Prince Andrew's fiancé and the future Duchess of York.

Or have you forgotten? I was in London when Fergie got married, enjoying the festivities with some friends in "high places" (in our case, an apartment window overlooking the Mall). I remember how excited everybody was to have a "real person" in the royal family -- someone "high-spirited, mischievous, and full of fun," with two or three boyfriends already behind her, beautiful skin, flaming red hair, and no intention of standing on ceremony. Apart from actually having a job in a London publishing firm, Fergie was also part of the "Verbier set,” a loose collection of high-flying British ski enthusiasts who spend their time on the slopes (and in the bars and bedrooms) of the ultra-chic, money-drenched Swiss Alps.

"Everybody adores her," said Princess Diana, who is related to Fergie through yet another mistress of Charles II (the Merrie Monarch got around) and who originally took credit for bringing Andrew and Fergie together. On the afternoon of their first "date," Fergie was spotted spoon-feeding Andrew his chocolate dessert; later, with the whoop of laughter that would become her trademark, she smacked him on the shoulder, thus serving early notice that her approach to the rules and rituals of monarchy would be casual, at best.

"There is no main reason why I love her," Prince Andrew remarked of his fun loving bride, "I just love her.” In the months that followed their wedding in Westminster Abbey, the Yorks were photographed everywhere hand in hand, kissing and canoodling. They were overtly, even defiantly, sexy -- the first royal couple in 150 years that anyone could really imagine Doing It. After all, Prince Andrew didn't earn his nickname, Randy Andy, just because it rhymed, and Fergie's vaunted "earthiness" seemed a perfect match for her husband's raunchy tastes. "They were two young people who would never ask how much elastic there was in the rubber band," said one seasoned palace courtier. So if Fergie ultimately went "over the top," it's well to remember how beloved she was -- and how apparently sincere -- when she made her debut on the royal stage.

Those days, alas, are long gone. The last shred of sympathy for "Good-time Fergie" evaporated in England in 1992, when those pictures turned up in the newspapers. Never mind that Fergie was already separated from her husband when the topless/toe-sucking scandal broke. Never mind that she and Prince Andrew really are headed for divorce. When it was announced last July that Fergie had been offered a job as “goodwill ambassador" for the United Nations (a post left vacant by the saintly Audrey Hepburn), the furious outcry against her practically shattered the windows at U. N. headquarters in Geneva.

"I can't think of anybody else I would sooner not appoint to this post," fumed Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, a high-ranking Tory member of Parliament, on the floor of the House of Commons. "The Duchess of York is a lady short on looks, absolutely deprived of any dress sense, has a figure like a Jurassic monster, is very greedy, has no tact, and wants to upstage everyone else.”

Well. There was a time in England when you might have been clapped in irons, maybe even deported to Australia, for talking that way about the Queen's daughter-in-law. In those days -- as recently as five years ago -- scandals were quickly squelched in order to preserve the prestige of the monarchy. Homosexuality, drug addiction, nymphomania, cross-dressing -- the Queen's extended family is acquainted with them all, but until now, for better or worse, their secrets were safe with the footmen. So what if Aunt Louise was goosing the tutor, or if Uncle So-and-so's taste in leather had started to get out of hand? The image of dignity was the important thing. Mrs. Patrick Campbell's famous dictum about the English ("They don't mind what you do, actually, as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses") could serve as the royal family's private motto. In royal terms, Fergie’s crime was unforgivable because she got caught.

“How stupid is she?” asks Marlene Eilers, a royal genealogist in Washington, D. C. Ms. Eilers is the author of Queen Victoria's Descendants and the publisher of Royal Book News, a bimonthly guide to monarchist literature that is unsurpassed both in the range of its listings and the severity of its criticism. Probably no one on the planet knows more than Ms. Eilers does about births, deaths, and trouble in the royal ranks. And Fergie is one of her least favorite duchesses.

"What did she think it meant to marry into the royal family?” Ms. Eilers wants to know. “It’s not like she was a London shop girl or something. You’ve got to have discretion. You've got to have tact. You've got to put the interests of the monarchy ahead of your own. She’s the pits -- she's a flake!” In Royal Book News, Ms. Eilers has stopped just short of calling for Fergie's expulsion from Britain, but she wouldn't mind seeing her stripped of her titles and she isn't convinced ("not for a minute!") by Fergie's protestations that she's always done “the best she can.” When the terms of Fergie's separation from Prince Andrew were made public last July, a lot of people thought she was “getting away with murder" by winning a provisional settlement of ₤600,000 and the use of a ₤1.4 million trust fund for herself and her two small daughters, Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice of York.

Fergie and her mate in jollier times.

Then again, Romenda Lodge, the six-bedroom, rented "cottage" Fergie currently occupies outside London, costs her a whopping ₤1,000 a month, and if she buys a new house for herself and her children (as she's supposed to do under the terms of her settlement), she'll be left, by rough calculation, with a mere ₤25,000 a year -- about $37,500 in spending money -- not the kind of income your ordinary duchess can easily live on. And say what you like about Sarah Ferguson -- being ordinary isn't one of her sins.

Consider, for example: Fergie, circa 1992 (when her marriage fell apart), returning to London on a British Airways flight from Miami, swilling champagne and making "bird noises” while she tossed packets of sugar at her fellow first-class travelers. She was wearing a paper bag over her head; palace spokesmen tightly remarked that she was "under a great deal of stress."

Not that these palace flunkies betrayed an iota of sympathy for Fergie's predicament. To this day, in fact, when the Duchess contemplates her fall from royal grace, she blames the "Palace Mafia," that powerful, indispensable assortment of equerries, secretaries, functionaries and clerks, most of them gay, who make the wheels of monarchy spin. "The rank and file at Buckingham Palace are a hundred times more 'royal' than the Queen," Fergie has said. "They never accepted me as a member of the family and just let me blunder my way from one thing to another. They gave me false schedules and phony deadlines and laughed themselves half to death whenever I was late. They even concealed invitations I'd received, and rejoiced when the London press called me the laziest woman in England."

Of course, it didn't help that Prince Andrew, following the romance of their gilded wedding and their honeymoon in the Azores, reverted to royal type as soon as the knot was tied, leaving his new bride completely to her own devices. In his defense, the Prince was at sea much of the time (literally -- Andrew has a career in the Royal Navy and was a hero of the Falklands War); still, his laissez-faire attitude toward his wife's shenanigans should have served as a harbinger of things to come. Shortly thereafter, Fergie would complain that the royal family as a whole "wasn't there for her.” She was given no direction, she said, and no support, as she struggled to make the transition from London party girl to royal ribbon-cutter. The most guidance her husband ever offered was telling her to "shut up" when she tried to explain herself in public. What's more, in the first months of their marriage, Andrew developed a passion for golf, a sport that might have been invented, Fergie thinks, with broken families in mind.

"Spend a lot of time before you make your decision" is her current advice to brides, "and really, really know your man.” Andrew keeps an embroidered cushion in his study that reads: Its tough being a prince. But it's tougher being a prince's wife, and in this case there were special problems. Prince Andrew is Queen Elizabeth's favorite child, a boy who can do virtually no wrong in his mother's eyes. He's spoiled rotten, in other words, and, according to the people who know him best, he behaves in private "like a great galumphing puppy -- one minute thumping his tail in delight and the next minute piddling on the rug.” Andrew also has "an uncontrollable temper" and "the failings of an oaf," and there are reports that he and Fergie actually came to blows as their marriage fell to pieces. The fights they had in public, anyway, were something new in the history of royalty. Case in point:

Andrew: Shut your mouth, you stupid cow!

Fergie: You're becoming just like your father!

Andrew: Better mine than yours!

Ouch. Granted, His Royal Highness has a point. Major Ronald Ferguson, Fergie's father, is an arrogant, overbearing, carousing, libidinous piece of work who was formerly Prince Charles's polo manager and whose former mistress, Lesley Player, recently published a trashy book about their love affair. In it were some juicy stories about Fergie and her reputed lovers -- the Texas socialite Steve Wyatt and his wheeler-dealer chum, Johnny Bryan, both of whom, in the year that Fergie and Andrew separated, were pictured with Fergie in "compromising situations.” Wyatt was photographed on holiday with Fergie in Morocco, while Bryan ... well, Bryan was the legendary "toe man.” Fergie was at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, enjoying what was supposed to be a reconciliation with the royal family, when the photos of herself and Bryan appeared in the press. Talk about getting caught foot in mouth.

Can this reputation be saved?

"The Queen must lie awake nights wondering what went wrong," says a longtime friend of the family. "Her Majesty is still fond of Sarah. Don't ask me why; she just is. But she doesn't understand why her children -- and especially her children's wives -- can't keep their problems to themselves. So what if they're stuck in difficult marriages? Personal happiness isn't the only thing!”

What this implies about the Queen's own marriage is a matter of conjecture; nevertheless, she has little patience for "silly girls who won't toe the line" (supposedly, when the Queen learned that Diana wanted “space” to work out her problems, she remarked tartly, "Space? Kensington Palace isn't a cottage, is it?"). Her reputation will never rest on her talents as a mother or her compassionate understanding of affairs of the heart. In this, the Queen is just like her own mother, the well-beloved but utterly ruthless Queen Mum, whose terminally cheery widowhood will have to end sometime -- that end seeming to many people to be the monarchy's only hope for survival.

"She's going to die, you see, eventually," a friend of mine explains, with the breathless obviousness that distinguishes so much conversation about the royals. "Then there'll be a big funeral, and everyone will remember World War II, and sympathy will swing back to the family. You'll see. Pageantry, pomp, death -- it's what they do best."

What they do worst, as is now known to the lowliest of Her Majesty’s subjects, is support each other, talk to each other, or tell each other the truth, rather than hoping “it’ll just blow over.” Fergie and Diana aren't the only ones who've run afoul of the Windsor way of doing things. A woman I know who dated Captain Mark Phillips, the divorced husband of the Queen's daughter, Princess Anne, recalls how the House of Windsor's stiff upper lip has managed to plant the kiss of emotional frigidity even on its former members. Debbie (not her real name) is a leggy American blonde, who found herself stranded for hours and days in Captain Mark's bedroom, while her pseudo-royal boyfriend concealed her from the servants, read the papers all day long, chatted with his cronies, practiced polo in the hall, ignored her completely and, on top of everything, was bewildered by her expressed dissatisfaction with their relationship. "Don't you love me?” Debbie wailed. "I need to know how you feel about me.” It’s not exactly the way to a British nobleman's heart, and the affair died quickly, more or less on the vine.

In the meantime, while Fergie thaws out from the royal cold treatment, she's been giving a lot of interviews -- to Diane Sawyer, to Maria Shriver, to anyone who will listen, really -- trying to explain how life with the Windsors went belly-up. "Don't we all make huge mistakes?” she asked recently on British TV. "You've got to live and learn and get on with your life. This experience has made me very much more thoughtful, and more aware of the need to control my spontaneity a little bit, so I don't fall into awful great big Pooh traps whose ramifications are too much for me to cope with.” The embattled Duchess was thirty-four last October 15, and presumably she's got a long life, with lots of adventures, still waiting around the corner -- in or out of the royal family, with or without the glare of the publicity she just can't seem to avoid.

"My life is very much just seeing how each day goes," Fergie says, "helping people as much as possible and looking after my girls. Hopefully in the months to come, the laughter and the joy will come springing back.” In the meantime, she's been seeing a psychiatrist -- for a while, she was attending group therapy sessions in central London, which must have given her fellow patients a lot to talk about -- and although her official engagements have all been withdrawn, she still sits on the boards of numerous charities. She's patroness of the Motor Neuron Disease Association, for example, and, at last report, was sponsoring a team of disabled British mountaineers in their attempt to scale Mount Pokhalde in the Himalayas. Cynics insist that Fergie’s playing a game -- "copying Princess Diana," as somebody said, "by jumping on the caring Mother Teresa charity bandwagon.” On the other hand, you could do worse than to emulate Mother Teresa, and if it keeps the dizzy duchess out of those "great big Pooh traps," it's for the good of the nation.

One thing Fergie refuses to discuss is the current status of her relationship with Johnny Bryan, whom her children, she says, are “fond of,” and who still plays an important role in her life. What that role might actually be is impossible to tell outside the privacy of Romenda Lodge. Bryan has been known to burst out laughing when he hears himself described as Fergie's "financial advisor," and whenever the gossip columns insist that the romance is finished, one or the other of them issues a statement or leaks the news that they're as "friendly" as ever. If all goes according to plan, Fergie and Andrew will be divorced this year, and many expect Fergie to marry Bryan when the time comes. If she does, however, she'll have to leave England and her children behind: Under no circumstances will the Queen permit her granddaughters to be raised, even on weekends, by a digit-sucking American entrepreneur.

Translation: Fergie's decision about her relationship with Bryan will be a tough call. Because if there's one thing everyone agrees on, it’s that Fergie is devoted to her children. She adores her girls, and they adore her, and she’s declared many times that she intends to remain on good terms with Andrew for their sake, if not her own. "Being friends with him today is good for the children," she says, "because we give them the warmth and love they need. We both make sure that when [Andrew] is there, he's with the children. They love their papa because he's a lovely man and he deserves to be loved.” So cozy are the Yorks, indeed, so loving and laughing and playful and smiling when they convene as a family, that the press has begun to speculate -- to the chagrin of palace staff -- that Fergie and Andrew will eventually reconcile.

Now wouldn't that be a fine kettle of fish? The chances of reconciliation are nominal, at best, but with Fergie you never know. And this very unpredictability might be the Duchess's last revenge on a system that loved her, then shunned her, and then tossed her in the dustbin. The Palace may do its royal best to keep her down. But, in return, she'll keep them guessing.