In a successful royal marriage, the participants lead separate lives. They have different duties, friends and interests. Their children are raised for them by nannies and are viewed by appointment. Often they sleep not only in separate beds but in separate apartments. Love sometimes develops, but it is certainly no requirement. The very public breakup between the Duke and Duchess of York shows, once again, what can happen when dynasts succumb to their subjects’ soap-opera values. “The problem with the current crop of royals is that they have started modeling their patterns of love, marriage and sex on a different class of people,” says historian David Starkey. “They have democratized their attitudes about marriage and have displayed the expectations of ordinary people.”
Fergie apparently expected her husband to be a fun-loving companion; by all accounts, he has become an indifferent couch potato and, worse yet, a golfer. Andrew, who is the second son of Queen Elizabeth II and fourth in line to the throne, evidently expected Sarah to learn her place; she never did. She suffered from comparison with her friend Diana, the Princess of Wales. Diana’s husband, Prince Charles, seems to talk more often to plants than to her, but despite an apparently joyless marriage she has knuckled down to duty. Diana had been a virgin bride; Fergie was emphatically not. She formed an all-too-public friendship with Steve Wyatt, 36, the scion of an American oil fortune. Last week he said the relationship was purely “platonic.” But Fergie had vacationed with him in Morocco and France, and Prince Andrew was said to be steaming.
Then, when the queen summoned her for a dressing-down, Sarah reportedly leaked the details to a newspaper. “That is totally, totally unacceptable,” says Harold Brooks-Baker, the editor of Burke’s Peerage. Buckingham Palace said curtly that lawyers were discussing “a formal separation.” “The knives are out for Fergie at the palace,” said BBC reporter Paul Reynolds, the recipient of a leak about her “unsuitability for public life.” (The queen’s chief press secretary, Charles Anson later apologized for that.) Details o separation remained to be settled. Sarah was expected to get custody of Princesses Beatrice, 3, and Eugenie, 2, along with a generous money settlement to forestall any memoirs on palace life. Unless she divorces and remarries, she will remain a duchess.
The queen may have herself to blame, in part, if her family’s standards have slipped. She broke the royal taboo on divorce in 1976 when she allowed her sister, Princess Margaret, to split with her photographer husband, Lord Snowdon. In 1989 she permitted her daughter, Princess Anne, to separate from her husband, Mark Phillips. With Andrew’s marriage on the rocks and the third son, Edward, unmarried at 28, the future of the monarchy may rest on the rickety relationship between Charles and Diana. “If she decided that she had had enough of Prince Charles,” novelist A. N. Wilson wrote in the Evening Standard, “it is hard to see how the show could go on into the next generation.” Britons still love the show; the current act threatens to drown out a national election campaign. But to prolong the run, the opera needs to be less soapy and a lot more grand.
title: “Fergie Flops At The Palace” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-09” author: “Diana Hooks”
In a successful royal marriage, the participants lead separate lives. They have different duties, friends and interests. Their children are raised for them by nannies and are viewed by appointment. Often they sleep not only in separate beds but in separate apartments. Love sometimes develops, but it is certainly no requirement. The very public breakup between the Duke and Duchess of York shows, once again, what can happen when dynasts succumb to their subjects’ soap-opera values. “The problem with the current crop of royals is that they have started modeling their patterns of love, marriage and sex on a different class of people,” says historian David Starkey. “They have democratized their attitudes about marriage and have displayed the expectations of ordinary people.”
Fergie apparently expected her husband to be a fun-loving companion; by all accounts, he has become an indifferent couch potato and, worse yet, a golfer. Andrew, who is the second son of Queen Elizabeth II and fourth in line to the throne, evidently expected Sarah to learn her place; she never did. She suffered from comparison with her friend Diana, the Princess of Wales. Diana’s husband, Prince Charles, seems to talk more often to plants than to her, but despite an apparently joyless marriage she has knuckled down to duty. Diana had been a virgin bride; Fergie was emphatically not. She formed an all-too-public friendship with Steve Wyatt, 36, the scion of an American oil fortune. Last week he said the relationship was purely “platonic.” But Fergie had vacationed with him in Morocco and France, and Prince Andrew was said to be steaming.
Then, when the queen summoned her for a dressing-down, Sarah reportedly leaked the details to a newspaper. “That is totally, totally unacceptable,” says Harold Brooks-Baker, the editor of Burke’s Peerage. Buckingham Palace said curtly that lawyers were discussing “a formal separation.” “The knives are out for Fergie at the palace,” said BBC reporter Paul Reynolds, the recipient of a leak about her “unsuitability for public life.” (The queen’s chief press secretary, Charles Anson later apologized for that.) Details o separation remained to be settled. Sarah was expected to get custody of Princesses Beatrice, 3, and Eugenie, 2, along with a generous money settlement to forestall any memoirs on palace life. Unless she divorces and remarries, she will remain a duchess.
The queen may have herself to blame, in part, if her family’s standards have slipped. She broke the royal taboo on divorce in 1976 when she allowed her sister, Princess Margaret, to split with her photographer husband, Lord Snowdon. In 1989 she permitted her daughter, Princess Anne, to separate from her husband, Mark Phillips. With Andrew’s marriage on the rocks and the third son, Edward, unmarried at 28, the future of the monarchy may rest on the rickety relationship between Charles and Diana. “If she decided that she had had enough of Prince Charles,” novelist A. N. Wilson wrote in the Evening Standard, “it is hard to see how the show could go on into the next generation.” Britons still love the show; the current act threatens to drown out a national election campaign. But to prolong the run, the opera needs to be less soapy and a lot more grand.
