The former Duchess of York is being forced to re-think a major aspect of her life in the wake of her ex-husband’s dramatic downfall – but she still has friends that are willing to bail her out
Now that her ex-husband Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has ignominiously been stripped of his various titles and honours, Sarah Ferguson has found herself quite literally “in the doghouse.”
Still – for now – living at the much-disputed Royal Lodge in Windsor, Sarah is reportedly spending much of her time drowning her sorrows with staff in a purpose-built bar at the back of the mansion that they have dubbed “The Doghouse.”
But she also has a mountain of business-related paperwork to go through; and one key change will be deleting the word ‘Duchess’ from paperwork relating to the eight limited companies of which she is still a director.
The Daily Mail reports that the free-spending former duchess is very busy untangling a huge mess of inter-related companies that she was associated with.
A royal insider added that she is encouraging her two daughters to maintain a diplomatic distance from their disgraced parents: “Sarah is encouraging Beatrice and Eugenie to get on with life as normal and discouraging them from meeting with her.
“She’s concerned that being associated publicly with their parents could damage their own chances of remaining part of the royal fold.”
Sarah does still have powerful friends who could provide her with some kind of safety net. Royal author Andrew Lownie told The Mirror: “Richard Branson’s invited her to stay at Necker Island whenever she wants. Lots of people will come out of the woodwork to to to to support her.
“So she has lots of places that she can go to. I suspect she will go somewhere like, Switzerland or, close to her daughter in Portugal, assuming that relationship should endure.”
He added that, before her ex-husband’s abrupt downfall, Sarah had almost worked her way back into the royal fold: “There she was back in the royal box at Wimbledon,” Lownie said. “I think she had been invited to Sandringham for Christmas.”
That invitation is now very much off the table, as has any invitation for Andrew, who is said to be spending his days “ranting and muttering” about the situation he now finds himself in.
That situation may yet get worse. Lownie told the Mirror that many more people are now willing to come forward and tell their own stories of working with the disgraced royal.
He said: “I’m hearing from protection officers, diplomats, people in the Navy. I’m getting two or three people a day.”
He says that there have been so many new revelations that he’s not only working on a new, expanded edition of his bombshell exposé Entitled – which did so much to unravel Andrew’s life – but he now has enough material for a second volume.
He explained: “I also have plans to do a sequel called Untitled … I’ve just got so much new material from people coming forward.”
