by Kitty Kelley
Sarah Ferguson made millions but spent even more, until she found herself, in the words of Oprah Winfrey, “spiraling downwards,” and again in the words of Oprah, “spiritually and morally bankrupt.”
Like a priest hearing confession, Oprah was prepared to absolve Sarah. “None of us are defined by our mistakes,” said the revered talk-show host, “but once you get the lesson, you don’t repeat it again.” Sarah nodded, but Oprah indicated she didn’t get it.
“So what is the lesson?” she asked her befuddled guest. Sarah stammered a little, her eyes glistening with tears.
“I guess chronic abuse of myself… dealing with it from a place of egotistical fear.”
Viewers watched the Duchess the same way they watched the video, hoping, praying, screaming for someone to cap the swill. Within the U.K., Republic renewed its pledge to rid the country of royalty while monarchists sat back, confident that the House of Windsor would once again rise out of its muck to make magic.
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Windsor Castle is the best-known symbol of the British monarchy. William the Conqueror chose the site for a fortress after his conquest of England in 1066. In 1917, when King George V needed to camouflage his German origins, he chose Windsor as the royal family’s dynastic name.
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Queen Victoria (far right) in 1893. After the death of her husband, Prince Albert, in 1861, she went into mourning and wore black clothes the rest of her life. Here she is pictured with her grandson the Duke of York, later to become King George V, and his wife, the Duchess of York, who became Queen Mary.
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Prince Edward, who became King Edward VIII and later the Duke of Windsor, in 1909 with Czar Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia, his son, and Prince George, who became King George V. As monarch, he did not dispatch the British navy to rescue his cousins during the Russian Revolution. The imperial family was executed by the Bolsheviks at Ekaterinburg in 1918.
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Queen Mary sits with three of her five sons: Prince Albert, who became King George VI; Prince Edward (Duke of Windsor), who became King Edward VIII; Prince George (Duke of Kent), who died during World War II. Absent are Prince Henry, later Duke of Gloucester, and Prince John, who died in 1919 at the age of fourteen.
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Britain’s German royal family reinvented as the House of Windsor. At left, Princess Mary, the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary, surrounded by four of her five brothers.
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The first published photograph of HRH Princess Elizabeth, age two, in May 1928 with her governess, Nanny Knight. They are standing in front of No. 145 Piccadilly, then the home of the Duke and Duchess of York, who became King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
author’s collection (a.c.)
“Britons hated that American woman,” said the King’s equerry Edward Dudley Metcalfe, recalling placards at the time of the abdication.
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“I intend to marry Mrs. Simpson as soon as she is free to marry,” King Edward VIII told the Prime Minister. “If I could marry her as King, well and good…. But if not… then I am prepared to go.” He gave up the throne in 1936, and after her second divorce, he married forty-year-old Wallis Warfield Simpson on June 3, 1937, in France.
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“Our family, us four,” is how the new King, George VI, described himself, his wife, Queen Elizabeth, and his two daughters, Princesses Margaret and Elizabeth.
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The Duke and Duchess of Windsor appear delighted to meet Hitler in 1937.
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The King and Queen, accompanied by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, inspect bomb damage at Buckingham Palace during World War II.
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Queen Elizabeth and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt riding in the presidential limousine during a parade welcoming Their Majesties to Washington, D.C. The King and Queen visited the White House to appeal for U.S. intervention into World War II.
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Princess Elizabeth became engaged to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten on July 9, 1947, against the initial objections of her parents. Philip had renounced his Greek royal title and adopted his maternal grandfather’s German surname.
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On November 20, 1947, Princess Elizabeth married Prince Philip at Westminster Abbey. “I don’t know whether I’m being very brave,” the bridegroom told a relative, “or very foolish.”
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“IT’S A BOY,” read the sign tacked to the gates of Buckingham Palace on November 4, 1948, to announce the birth of Prince Charles Philip Arthur George. The King and Queen, pictured with Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh after the christening of their first child.
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After a three-month royal tour, Princess Elizabeth returns to London with her husband. She greets her young son, Charles, with a pat on the shoulder as Philip hugs her mother.
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The grieving women of Windsor at the funeral of King George VI on February 6, 1952. The King’s daughter, Elizabeth; his eighty-five-year-old mother, Mary, who died thirteen months later. The King’s widow, Elizabeth, later styled herself as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
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Surrounded by her family, Elizabeth II waves to her subjects from the balcony of Buckingham Palace after her coronation on June 2, 1953. After fourteen years of austerity from war, reconstruction, and rations, Britain spent $300 million during coronation week. The Queen’s gown cost her government $1 million.
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The new Queen meets her favorite Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. “He was always such fun,” she said. Churchill admitted he had fallen “a little in love” with his monarch, whose portrait he hung above his bed.
Harry S. Truman Library
Princess Elizabeth with her favorite U.S. President, Harry Truman, during her first visit to Washington, D.C., in 1951.
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Princess Margaret rebounds from Peter Townsend with Antony Armstrong-Jones, the commoner who became the Earl of Snowdon. They married on May 6, 1960, and produced two children, David and Sarah.
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Roddy Llewellyn met Princess Margaret in 1973 when she was forty-three and he was twenty-three. Their public love affair caused the Queen to denounce her sister for having “the lifestyle of a guttersnipe.”
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HRH the Princess Margaret becomes the first member of the British royal family to divorce. She was not immune to the scandal she caused. She suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized with gastroenteritis and alcoholic hepatitis. She also threatened suicide.
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Rumors about the Queen’s splintered marriage first surfaced in February 1957 in U.S. newspapers. The Queen’s press secretary denounced the stories: “It is quite untrue that there is a rift between the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh…. It is a lie.” Yet, the royal couple, who had been apart for four months, staged a very public reunion for photographers.
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From the Queen’s personal scrapbook: Her Majesty in bed with her children, Anne (age thirteen), Charles (age fifteen), and Andrew (age four, after the birth of her last child, Edward, in 1964. This photo appeared only once in England. After it was published in the Daily Express, the Palace announced: “Since the photographs are of such a personal kind, the Queen would naturally prefer that they not be published. For that reason, we are unable to approve their future publication.”
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A forlorn Prince Charles, thirteen, dogged by photographers. “Loneliness is something royal children have always suffe
red and always will,” said Lord Mountbatten. “Not much you can do about it, really.”
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The prettiest picture ever taken of Queen Elizabeth II: no corgis, no purses, no scowls.
John F. Kennedy Library
American royalty meets British royalty in 1961 when Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh greet President John F. Kennedy and his First Lady, Jacqueline, at Buckingham Palace.
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Princess Alexandra, a married cousin of the Queen’s, is a close friend of Prince Philip’s.
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The late film star Merle Oberon, another close friend, was Philip’s favorite Hollywood hostess.
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Helene Cordet, also a close friend, was the first woman publicly rumored to be a mistress of Philip’s.
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The blond, blue-eyed prince who married Elizabeth and became the Duke of Edinburgh dazzled women.
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An extract from one of several letters the author received during the research of this book, offering to sell purported love letters written by Philip to other women on Balmoral, Sandringham, or Britannia stationery.
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The royal family at Windsor in October 1972, celebrating the Queen’s silver anniversary. Back row, standing left to right: The Earl of Snowdon; the Duke of Kent; Prince Michael of Kent; the Duke of Edinburgh; the Earl of St. Andrews (elder son of the Duke of Kent); Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales; Prince Andrew; the Honorable Angus Ogilvy and his son, James Ogilvy. Seated on chairs, left to right: Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon; the Duchess of Kent (holding Lord Nicholas Windsor, her younger son); Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother; Queen Elizabeth II; Princess Anne; Marina Ogilvy and her mother, Princess Alexandra. Seated on floor, left to right: Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley (children of Princess Margaret); Prince Edward; Lady Helen Windsor (daughter of the Duke of Kent). Photograph by Patrick Lichfield.
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The royal family’s love of blood sports: The Queen (center, holding her camera) and her shooting party at Sawai Madhopur, with the eight-foot-nine-inch tiger shot by Prince Philip (far left), who is president of the World Wildlife Fund.
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Behind her back, the Queen Mother was called “Cookie” by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor because of her fondness for sweets. She, in turn, referred to the Duchess of Windsor as “that woman” and prevented her from having the status of Her Royal Highness. Their feud lasted a lifetime.
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The Duchess of Windsor looking out the window of Buckingham Palace after her husband’s funeral in 1972.
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Charles and Lord Mountbatten, or “Uncle Dickie,” as he was called by the royal family. He advised the young Prince to become “a moving target for women.” He wrote: “I believe in a case like yours, the man should sow his wild oats and have as many affairs as he can before settling down….”
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Charles fell in love with Camilla Shand, but she married Andrew Parker Bowles.
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Charles with the Earl Spencer’s twenty-two-year-old daughter Sarah, in 1977, at Cowdray, Sussex, where he was playing polo.
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Charles followed Mountbatten’s advice to “choose a suitable, attractive, and sweet-charactered girl before she [meets] anyone else she might fall for.” He became engaged to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. Photograph by Snowdon.
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The Prince and Princess of Wales after their wedding at St. Paul’s Cathedral on July 29, 1981.
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Diana’s father, the Earl Spencer, with his second wife, Raine, in front of Althorp, the family estate.
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Dame Barbara Cartland, the romance novelist, who is Raine Spencer’s mother. “Her false eyelashes look like two crows flying into the White Cliffs of Dover,” said Diana, who would not invite her stepgrandmother to the royal wedding.
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Diana and her mother, Frances, who left Diana’s father to marry Peter Shand Kydd. Accused of adultery, Frances lost custody of her children when her mother, Lady Ruth Fermoy, testified against her in the divorce.
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Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, who inherited his father’s title, was known in the press as “Champagne Charlie.”
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Diana is estranged from her older sister, Jane, who is married to Sir Robert Fellowes, the Queen’s private secretary.
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The young Princess of Wales in the fat and thin stages of bulimia before she conquered the disease and put herself under the fashionable tutelage of British Vogue.
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The glamorous Princess became the most photographed woman in the world.
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Diana becomes the first member of the royal family to touch a person suffering from AIDS.
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“I am a humanitarian figure,” said Diana during her 1997 visit to Angola, “always have been, always will be.” After visiting amputee children, she criticized governments for continuing to manufacture lethal weapons and called for a worldwide ban on land mines.
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“My biggest thrill,” said Diana after dancing with John Travolta, the star of Saturday Night Fever, at the White House in 1985.
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“The Prince nearly fell out of his chair,” said the Royal Ballet’s Wayne Sleep after Diana leapt on stage at Covent Garden in a white satin slip to surprise her husband. She had secretly rehearsed a dance routine that she performed in front of 2,600 people who had never seen royalty slink seductively across a stage. Charles later said her “exhibitionism” embarrassed him.
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After Diana found out about her husband’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, she began her own love affair with Army Major James Hewitt.
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Diana with art dealer Oliver Hoare. Newspapers reported that for eighteen months the Princess peppered the married man with anonymous telephone calls and screamed torrents of abuse at his wife.
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England’s rugby captain Will Carling, another married man who became close to the Princess of Wales. His wife threatened to name Diana in a divorce suit for adultery.
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British car salesman James Gilbey, whose telephone conversations with Diana were secretly recorded by a mysterious third party. In one transcript, Gilbey reassures the Princess, whom he calls “Squidgy,” that she won’t get pregnant.
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“I never looked better,” said Sarah Ferguson of her July 23, 1986, wedding to HRH the Duke of York, the Queen’s favorite son.
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“At one point, I weighed 250 pounds. I’ve always had a weight problem,” said the Duchess of York, also known as Fergie. “I’d work out, but then I’d eat ten sandwiches with gooey mayonnaise.” She later lost 100 pounds and became the spokesperson for Weight Watchers International.
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“Glamorous at la
st,” exclaimed Fergie in 1991 after months of strenuous dieting. Like the Princess of Wales, she, too, took lovers outside her marriage. Her excuse: her naval husband’s absence. “He was away at sea all the time,” she said. “But he’s still my bestest friend.”
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Texan Steve Wyatt was “the love of my life,” Fergie admitted. She was five months pregnant when they met. “He bored everyone to tears,” said the columnist Taki, “by talking about diets and good karma and the rest of the bullshit modern Americans pollute us with.”
