Long before they became sisters-in-law, Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson were close friends in their teenage years. In fact, the late Princess of Wales even played matchmaker, helping Sarah and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor marry and welcoming her into the British royal family.
The two women also shared another bond: both were separated from their husbands in the 1990s. Married to two princes, comparisons between them surfaced almost immediately, and they were often portrayed as rivals, something that never truly reflected reality, even if there were certain tensions between them.
© Tim GrahamOver time, Diana and Sarah’s friendship came to an end, and by the time the mother of Princes William and Harry died in a car accident in 1997, they were no longer speaking. “Sadly, in the end, we hadn’t spoken for a year, although I never knew the reason, except that once Diana got something into her head, it stayed there for a while,” the former Duchess of York wrote in her autobiography Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey to Find Herself.
© Julian Parker“I wrote letters thinking that whatever had happened didn’t matter, that we should sort it out. And I knew she would come back.” In fact, the day before she died, Diana reportedly called a friend and asked, “Where’s that redhead? I want to talk to her.” Sarah has also recalled that their relationship had its ups and downs, but “we always maintained a strong friendship. (…) Our bond was never broken.”
© Princess Diana ArchiveAlthough Sarah claimed in her autobiography that she did not know the reason for their falling-out, an anecdote published in an earlier memoir, My Story: Sarah, the Duchess of York, has often been cited. In the 1996 book, Andrew’s ex-wife revealed that she developed plantar warts after borrowing a pair of Diana’s shoes.
“When I was living in Clapham, Diana helped me out by giving me all her shoes (and her warts), we wore the same size,” Sarah recalled. According to author Tina Brown in her 2007 biography The Diana Chronicles, that remark proved costly: “The divorced duchess had capitalized on a rather bland memoir, filled with kind words about her sister-in-law, except for one fatal sentence. She wrote that by borrowing Diana’s shoes, she had caught warts. Goddesses don’t have warts. Despite Fergie’s apologies, Diana never spoke to her again.”
© Princess Diana ArchiveDespite their estrangement at the end, Sarah has spoken affectionately about her “dear sister-in-law and dear friend” since Diana’s passing. In exclusive remarks to HELLO! in 2021, the former duchess admitted, “I think of her almost every day because she was the only person who truly understood and was there during that time in the ’80s, when we were all wearing such strange clothes,” adding, “She was already in the family before I was, and we had so much fun.”
© Princess Diana ArchiveSarah has also praised Diana as “angelic, beautiful”, and “very funny.” “There’s no one like her. I will always remember her tinkling laugh and how mischievous she was with her jokes. At dinner, she would whisper something to me, and I would burst out laughing, unable to contain myself. And she would keep completely composed, so it always looked as though I was the naughty one.”
“There was a period when I believe they tried to separate us, and that made me very sad because I adored her. I still adore her. That’s why I always say: it doesn’t matter what others think, if you love someone, you love them. My heart will always be with her,” Sarah Ferguson added.
