We’ve seen a lot of the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, lately. The woman universally and affectionately known as Fergie has been giving interviews to promote her new novel, The Most Intriguing Lady, about a Duke’s daughter who solves high society crimes – but unsurprisingly, it’s not her quotes about the book that are making headlines.
Journalists have seized on the opportunity to question the Duchess about her disgraced former husband, Prince Andrew, who was forced to step down as a working royal over his association with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. Last year, he reached a multi-million pound settlement with Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of sexually abusing her while she was underage (Andrew vehemently denies the allegations).
And, ever loyal, Sarah Ferguson has defended him staunchly. To The Telegraph, she said she would ‘always be there’ for the Duke of York, ‘a very kind man’ who amazes her with how good a grandfather he is. She added, ‘I think it’s really sad to see what Andrew has been through’. To Hello, she declared that she feels ‘really pleased and proud’ to financially support him ‘through her work’ because he ‘doesn’t take taxpayers money’.
‘We’ve been there for each other,’ she said on Good Morning America. ‘When I’ve gone through really bad times in the past, Andrew’s always been there.’ She added, ‘He’s very steadfast for the girls. We are women that also have had to see a demise of a very strong man, and that has been really difficult to see.’ And during a conversation with US GLAMOUR’s editor, Samantha Barry, she insisted again, ‘I married a good man.’
In fact, so fulsome has her praise been for her former spouse that it’s beginning to feel as though she’s being deployed on a PR mission to rehabilitate him.
It makes sense. We know how well it went when he attempted the job himself – remember the excruciating Emily Maitlis Panorama interview in which he claimed that he was unable to sweat and that he couldn’t have had sex with Giuffre because he was in Pizza Express in Woking at the time? The one where he totally failed to make anything approaching an apology for his friendship with Epstein; in fact, said he still didn’t regret it because he met so many people through him? It would be little surprise if his team had asked Fergie to use her press tour to try to scrub that appearance from our minds. They knew she’d oblige, because ever since her divorce from Andrew in 1996, she’s been nothing but supportive of her ex.
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While there’s always been something oddly touching about the continued closeness of the former couple – they still live together much of the time at Royal Lodge in Windsor and the Duchess once described them as ‘the happiest divorced couple in the world’ – she has a long history of shouldering all the blame for scandals which engulfed them as a pair.
There was the time in 2010 when she was caught by the News of the World trying to sell access to Andrew, and insisted he knew nothing about it to protect him. Two years later, she apologised for another ‘gigantic error of judgement on my behalf’ when she allowed Epstein to provide £15,000 to help pay off her debts. Again, it was her fault entirely, she said; nothing to do with her former husband.
This time, however, she played absolutely no part in the reason he’s fallen from grace. And it’s a reason that most former wives would find disturbing in the extreme; that they would never expect to have to find themselves defending. Asking the Duchess to burnish Andrew’s image when Giuffre claims he joked about her being only a few years older than their daughters Beatrice and Eugenie before having sex with her is the definition of unfair.
For whatever reason she clearly feels it’s her job to act as his shield, and her loyalty to the father of her children is laudable. But it shouldn’t be any woman’s job to answer for their partner’s alleged misdeeds, particularly sexual ones.
Virginia Giuffre’s lawsuit against Prince Andrew is more proof that women should not – and will not – be silenced on abuse.
Watching Fergie grapple with all the tricky questions about Andrew is uncomfortable for the same reason as it was watching Donald Trump parading women who’d accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct during his presidential race against Hillary Clinton: she didn’t deserve to be president, the stunt signalled, because of what her husband may or may not have done. Punish the woman for her man’s alleged crimes.
Prince Andrew is a man who has gone through life being cosseted by those around him, but if he’s going to redeem himself in the public’s opinion, it’s Prince Andrew who needs to do the work. Fergie has already paid too high a price for joining the royal family: the decades of cruel taunts about everything from her weight to her dress sense. Let’s not make her pay for him, too.
