Sarah Ferguson’s Friendship With Princess Diana Through the Years

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Sarah Ferguson's Friendship With Princess Diana Through the Years

Royally bonded. Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson were both sisters-in-law and close friends, but their relationship was not without conflict. In her 2011 memoir, Finding Sarah, Ferguson recalled the pair’s falling out before Diana died at 36 in a 1997 car crash in Paris. “It is true that our friendship was periodically strained. Sadly, at the end [of the princess’ life], we hadn’t spoken for a year, although I never knew the reason, except that once Diana got something in her head it stuck there for a while,” she wrote. The twosome were fourth cousins and knew each other as adolescents, although their friendship truly started to blossom when they reconnected in 1980. At the time, Diana was 19 and Ferguson was 21. “Diana was one of the quickest wits I knew. Nobody made me laugh like she did,” the Duchess of York told Harper’s Bazaar in February 2007. When Diana married King Charles III in 1981, Ferguson was in attendance. She became a confidant to the Princess of Wales as she navigated her transition into royal life. “She was two years younger than I, and I strove to support and protect her as I would a younger sister,” the duchess later wrote in her 1997 book, My Story. The author and Diana went from friends to family members when Ferguson married Prince Andrew in 1986. Although the royal couple had known each other as children, they reconnected in 1985 when Queen Elizabeth II invited Ferguson to an event at Windsor Castle at Diana’s recommendation. Prior to her wedding to Andrew, Ferguson became the first female member of the royal family to have a hen party. She later admitted that she and the partygoers, including Diana, got arrested for impersonating police officers at the shindig. “We were arrested by parks police,” she explained during a March 2023 appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show. “We go in the back of the van, and [Diana] had put her engagement ring the other way, and I had put my engagement ring the other way. And we are sitting like this, [straight up].” Ferguson recalled that the late princess was unperturbed by their run-in with the law. “She just looked around [the car] and saw smoky bacon-flavored crisps and started taking them and eating them,” the royal told host Kelly Clarkson. “And the policeman in the front goes, ‘You can’t do that.’ And then eventually they realized that it was Diana and me.” After supporting each other on their respective wedding days, the friends would later lean on each other as both of their marriages fell apart. “[1991] was the year we first put words to the unspeakable idea that had been nudging us in the ribs for some time: that one or both of us might leave the royal family,” Ferguson wrote in My Story. “We burned the phone wires into the night, trading secrets and jokes that no-one else would understand.” The writer and Andrew split in 1996 after 10 years of marriage. They share daughters Princess Beatrice, born in 1988, and Princess Eugenie, born in 1990. The prince stepped away from his senior duties in 2019 after being accused of sexually assaulting Virginia Giuffre when she was underage. Andrew denied any wrongdoing and reached a settlement with Giuffre for an undisclosed amount of money in February 2022, one month after being stripped of his royal titles. Ferguson subtly hinted at her ex-husband’s scandal during a March 2023 interview with Glamour. "In 1986 I married a very good man — zip," she said while making a zipped-lips motion with her hand. Diana, for her part, finalized her divorce from Charles in 1996 after being separated for four years. The duo — whose marriage was rocked by the former Prince of Wales’ infidelity with his now-wife, Queen Consort Camilla — shared sons Prince William, born in 1982, and Prince Harry, born in 1984. "I think Diana would be really proud of her sons and their wives and [her grandkids]," Ferguson said of her longtime friend during an August 2021 conversation with Entertainment Tonight. Keep scrolling for a look at Ferguson and Diana’s friendship over the years:

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1980

The fourth cousins reconnected after previously knowing each other in their younger years.

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1981

Ferguson attended Diana’s nuptials to Charles.

“Diana invited me to her wedding, a very big deal, and thoughtfully gave me some material to make up into a dress — needless to say, I had nothing suitable,” she wrote in My Story. “I went to the ceremony on my own, in a very big car.”

Despite being present when the royal couple exchanged vows, the television personality was hurt that she wasn’t included in all of the wedding festivities. “Diana’s flatmates were all included for wedding breakfast at the Palace, but I had not been invited,” she recalled in the 1996 memoir. “My feelings were hurt — there was nothing like a grand occasion to make me feel fat and unworthy.”

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1985

The duchess began dating Andrew. Their romance blossomed after they were seated next to each other at a Windsor Castle dinner, which the queen invited Ferguson to at Diana’s urging.

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1986

The friends had a run-in with the law together at Ferguson’s hen party prior to her wedding to Andrew. 

“We were arrested by parks police,” Ferguson recalled during a March 2023 appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, noting that she, Diana and the rest of the group had been dressed like police officers at the time of the arrest.

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1991

In My Story, Ferguson referred to 1991 as the year she and Diana “put words to the unspeakable idea that had been nudging us in the ribs for some time: that one or both of us might leave the royal family.” The pals’ looming sense of dread came as they both faced problems in their respective marriages.

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1992

Both Diana and Ferguson separated from their respective husbands.

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1992

In the book Diana: Her True Story — In Her Own Words, Diana’s biographer Andrew Morton wrote that the princess had at times felt inadequate compared to Ferguson.

"Fergie was a different kettle of fish altogether, and she wooed everybody in this family and did it so well. She left me looking like dirt,” the book read. “My husband said: ‘I wish you would be like Fergie — all jolly. Why are you always so miserable?’”

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1996

Always in lockstep, the two royals finalized their respective divorces the same year. 

“I didn't want a divorce but had to because of circumstance," Ferguson told Harper’s Bazaar in February 2007, noting that she and Andrew saw each other a mere 40 days in the first five years of their marriage due to his naval obligations.

She continued: "I wanted to work; it's not right for a princess of the royal house to be commercial, so Andrew and I decided to make the divorce official so I could go off and get a job."

Diana, for her part, lamented about the perils of ending her marriage in February 1996.

"If I’d known a year ago what I’d experience going through this divorce I never would have consented," she wrote on Kensington Palace stationery that went up for auction in February 2023. “It’s desperate and ugly.” 

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1997

When Diana died in a car crash in August, she and Ferguson had not been on speaking terms for more than one year.

“I tried, wrote letters, thinking whatever happened didn't matter, let's sort it out,” the Most Intriguing Lady author recalled of trying to repair the relationship during a 2007 interview with Harper’s Bazaar. “And I knew she'd come back. In fact, the day before she died, she rang a friend of mine and said, 'Where's that Red? I want to talk to her.'"

Ferguson added that she “never knew the reason” behind her falling out with Diana.

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2018

During a November interview with the Daily Mail, Ferguson noted that she wished the late princess could’ve attended her daughter Eugenie’s wedding to Jack Brooksbank one month prior.

“I thought of absent friends and family [during the festivities]; of Diana — but she’s with me all the time. What I miss most is her tinkling laughter,” she shared.

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2021

"I loved her from the minute I met her when I was 14 to the minute she passed away," Ferguson said of Diana during a July interview with The Telegraph. “There was nobody like her and there never will be.”

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2023

During a March appearance on Good Morning America, Ferguson stated that she thought Diana would be “very proud” of her five grandchildren — Prince George, Princess Charlotte, Prince Louis, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet — from her sons, William and Harry.

“I think we’d have a ‘Granny-Off,” added the duchess, who is grandmother of Beatrice’s daughter Sienna and Eugenie’s son August. “She would run faster in the races. I wonder — she’d probably be funnier. No, I think I’d be funnier.”