Closer than ever... so will Fergie and Andrew wed again?
RICHARD KAY SPECIAL
Could this family wedding photo of the duchess of York standing at Prince Philip’s shoulder be a metaphor for things to come?
For Philip, 97, it must have taken a great effort of will. For Fergie, perhaps, the hope of rehabilitation — the last time she appeared in the pictures of a formal Windsor family gathering was 27 years ago.
There were times during Princess Eugenie’s wedding ceremony when the duchess’s mobile face took on a pensive look. like any mother of the bride, her mind was dwelling on her daughter’s happiness.
Sitting in a front-row pew next to elder daughter Beatrice, with the Queen and Philip close behind, she was almost one of the family again.
But for the duchess, this was a day of added poignance. Today, she is 59. What woman entering her 60th year doesn’t feel a need to be sure about her own future?
No one was more aware than Fergie herself that, among the 850 guests at her daughter’s wedding last Friday, the gossip wasn’t just about Eugenie and Jack, but about Sarah and Andrew.
Could they be the next to make their marriage vows? What a royal wedding that would be.
For more than 26 years, the twists and turns of this divorced couple have been entertaining many as much as they have been infuriating Andrew’s father, Prince Philip.
The manner in which they have lived virtually together almost as man and wife for many years is proof enough for most of their circle that one factor, and one factor alone, has stood between them remarrying — Prince Philip.
He has never forgiven the duchess for humiliating his second son and embarrassing the family when pictures were published of her ‘financial adviser’ John Bryan kissing her toes by a swimming pool in the South of France.
Just the other week when Fergie, together with her daughters Beatrice and Eugenie, was staying with the Queen, her morning departure was fixed with military precision for 10.30am prompt, 45 minutes before Philip was due to arrive — a gap calculated to be big enough to cope with any unforeseen delay.
In the past, when Fergie has been invited to tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle, he has made an excuse and left the room on the point of her arrival.
The Queen, it must be said, likes the duchess. despite her errors, extravagance and extraordinary ability to put her foot in it, she sees in Fergie a lively woman who has never lost her ability to make her favourite son happy. And she is proud of the way Sarah has raised her daughters.
Indeed, of all the royals, the Queen is the most relaxed about Andrew sharing Royal lodge — the Queen Mother’s old home in Windsor Great Park — with his former wife.
More significantly, she is unlikely to raise any serious objections should they decide to remarry.
In the past, Andrew disdained the idea, saying that their untypical domestic arrangements for a divorced couple were intended to make life easier for their two daughters.
No doubt that is true. But their lives under the same roof over the past 12 years have drawn them closer than either expected, and if Andrew or Sarah did — separately or together — harbour thoughts of remarriage, it is hardly something that would be talked about in front of Prince Philip.
In fact, with the birth in April of William and Kate’s third child, Prince louis, Prince Andrew dropped to seventh in line to the throne, freeing him from requiring the Queen’s permission to marry.
under the Royal Marriages Act, 1772, this is only required for the first six in line. When Harry and Meghan have children, Andrew will drop even further.
As a senior courtier observes: ‘It
isn’t as though they are young people jumping from one mistake to another. Prince Andrew and the Duchess are moving into their 60s, mature and experienced. But, of course, they seem very happy as they are and no one can say that they ever will want to remarry.’
It is generally accepted, however — despite their proximity in the wedding photographs — that if they did, no such decision could be taken while Philip is alive. For the moment, what we are seeing is the significant process of Fergie carefully being slipped back into the royal cast of characters.
She has twice appeared in the court circular, once standing in for Andrew at Westminster Abbey at the memorial service for comedian Ronnie Corbett, and on an earlier occasion representing him at a thanksgiving for the industrialist and long-time Royal Family friend, Sebastian de Ferranti.
Then, in June, she was invited by the Queen into the royal box at Ascot for the fourth year running — quite a coup for a daughter-inlaw who lost her HRH when the couple were divorced in 1996, by which time they had already been separated for four years.
She’s still not made it back into the carriage procession from Windsor Castle down the course, however. Instead, as the carriages have gone by, the Duchess of York has performed the deepest possible curtsey to the Queen. Prince Philip has been absent.
And in the weeks that she’s been helping to organise her daughter’s wedding, she used Prince Andrew’s apartment and office in Buckingham Palace.
Most significantly, the official photographs of the wedding party saw her placed right behind the Duke of Edinburgh’s left shoulder. No one would have been surprised if Andrew had occupied that position, as it would have placed him between his daughter and his ex-wife.
Instead, we were given a glimpse of the latest step in a steady rehabilitation which stretches back to 2014 when the Queen pointedly allowed the Duchess to host a party for 200 at Windsor Castle to celebrate the 21st anniversary of her Children In Crisis charity.
At the same time, Fergie has become a very popular guest among royal staff, some of whom know her from those mere six
years when she and Andrew were together after their 1986 marriage.
When leaving Balmoral after her August stay of several days, she wrote thank-you notes to each member of staff who looked after her. She also left each of them a keepsake gift of a key-fob.
Her tip — a traditional gesture in royal and country houses — was a generous sum deposited behind the staff bar.
To the domestic staff at the Queen’s Scottish home, who don’t take to every member of the Royal Family, her thoughtfulness has made her a favourite. It was at Balmoral that she last appeared in a family photo tableau in summer 1991.
To many, of course, the togetherness of Andrew and Fergie still seems incredible. What had been an instant love match soon descended into a crumbling marriage of a young woman unable to cope with the restraints of royalty and a Prince whose judgment was often sadly lacking.
For the Duchess, being single and shorn of her HRH meant pursuit of success on her own terms, plunging into commercial enterprises which made her at first rich and then, when things were going wrong and she couldn’t put a brake on her spendthrift lifestyle, close to bankruptcy.
Andrew’s problems grew out of his friendship with questionable billionaires. One of whom was American businessman Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted paedophile.
The friendship saw Andrew being accused of having sex with a 17-year-old ‘sex-slave’ of Epstein (considered legally under-age in America). The Prince vehemently denied her claim, which was part of his alleged victim’s legal action as a mature woman against Epstein, and a judge in Florida ordered it to be struck from the record.
With any other divorced couple, such crises would heap fuel on the bonfire of their broken marriage. But for the Yorks, the reverse happened.
When Fergie’s finances ran aground with debts in excess of £1.5 million, Andrew stepped in to cover most of it with his own money, plus the help of friends (who included Jeffrey Epstein).
WHILE Andrew was suffering — and Palace officialdom shaking — from the sex claims in America, Fergie’s was the first voice heard defending him. ‘I won’t stand by and have his character defamed,’ she stormed on American TV. ‘I will not have one word said about him on any level.’
She called the sex claims ‘shockingly accusatory’, adding: ‘He’s a great father and humongously good man.’
In the U.S., the Duchess’s name linked to products can still sell; it has been used to promote slimming plans, tea and candles — and she travels there often.
When she comes home, it is to Andrew at Royal Lodge — though she has her own suite of rooms. There is also, of course, the seven-bedroom Chalet Helora in that most chi-chi of Swiss ski resorts, Verbier, which was bought for £13 million four years ago and is in both their names.
Both have had other partners since they split. Andrew has been linked to actress Angie Everhart, model Alexandra Escat and businesswoman Amanda Staveley.
Fergie was romantically linked to Italian Count Gaddo della Gherardesca, Norwegian frozen foods tycoon Geir Frantzen and internet entrepreneur Manuel Fernandez, eight years her junior.
Nevertheless, guests in the Alps and Royal Lodge are amused to hear Fergie and Andrew refer to each other as ‘husband’ and ‘wife’. The Duchess has cheekily described their relationship as ‘divorced to each other right now... we’ve never really left each other.’
And as they sat together in St George’s Chapel exchanging smiles and whispered asides on Friday, who would have thought they had ever been apart.
So with one daughter happily married, could their remarriage really happen?
Frankly, no one knows. But wouldn’t it be so very ‘Fergie’ for the royal wife who lost her HRH title to get it back again?