A royal bond that stole hearts has ended after a surprising move.
A royal author has shared his views on what went wrong between the two royal wives, who were once best friends.
Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson’s friendship ended after Andrew’s ex-wife published her autobiography, according to Andrew Lownie.
Diana, the late mother of Prince William and Harry, reportedly distanced herself because she feared the mother of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie would damage her reputation and sell stories.
In a new video published by the Daily Mail On May 28, the historian and author recapped the arc of the two women’s relationship.
Diana and Ferguson, 66, were fourth cousins and childhood friends who married into the royal family just a few years apart.
It was the late princess who allegedly introduced Ferguson to the former Prince Andrew.
Lownie claimed the sisters-in-law argued over Ferguson’s 1996 autobiography, My Story, “in which she referred to a wart.” [wart] for borrowing shoes from Lady Diana.”
“In fact, the reality was that Diana was very worried about Sarah Ferguson selling stories about her, and that relationship was never repaired, even though Sarah Ferguson claimed it was,” he said.
Lownie, author of the bestselling 2025 investigative biography Title: The Rise and Fall of House Yorkalleged that Ferguson was someone Diana turned to to vent her frustrations about life in the royal fold.
“Diana had concerns that Fergie was perhaps too loud and was somehow damaging her own reputation, and she began to distance herself,” he said.
The author claimed that Diana also played a “tough trick” on Ferguson by saying they would both divorce their husbands, the future King Charles and then Prince Andrew, at the same time.
However, Diana “let Sarah Ferguson do it alone and basically learned from the way the royal family treated Sarah Ferguson how she would handle divorce herself.”
Ferguson and Andrew divorced in 1992 after a decade of marriage, but remained close in the years that followed. However, they continued to live together at Royal Lodge, the house from which they were evicted in October 2025, in light of new scrutiny around her links to Jeffrey Epstein.
Diana and Charles, meanwhile, married in the “wedding of the century” in 1981, separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. William and Harry’s mother lost her life in a car accident in Paris the following year, aged 36.
Ferguson, better known as Fergei, previously claimed she and Diana supported each other in a unique way during their days dominating the front page as the “Windsor Wives”.
