Prince Philip wanted nothing more to do with Sarah Ferguson after the toe-sucking scandal that rocked the royal family five months after her separation from Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, according to veteran royal reporter Charles Rae.
Rae was recalling the episode that followed photographs of Ferguson and her financial adviser, John Bryan, sucking her toes and frolicking by a pool in St Tropez, pictures that were splashed across the front page of the Daily Mirror while she was staying at Balmoral with the royals. He said the late Duke of Edinburgh made clear he did not want anything more to do with Ferguson. The Queen, by contrast, was not as severe and still kept her around.
Rae said Elizabeth II would still have tea with Ferguson at Balmoral or Sandringham, a sign that the split inside the family was not total even at the height of the embarrassment. The reporter said he would have loved to have been at Balmoral when the papers arrived and the Queen and Prince Philip first saw the images, because it must have landed badly. His view was blunt: philandering does not help a marriage.
The scandal grew out of a marriage that had begun with royal optimism. Diana, the late Princess of Wales, introduced Ferguson and Andrew in June 1985. Andrew proposed on his 26th birthday, February 19, 1986, and they married at Westminster Abbey on July 23, 1986. Their daughters followed, with Princess Beatrice born in August 1988 and Princess Eugenie in March 1990.
By then Andrew’s naval career had already kept him away from home for long stretches, and the marriage was under pressure long before the separation was announced on March 19, 1992. The divorce was not finalised until May 30, 1996. Ferguson has since said she and her ex-husband are the happiest divorced couple in the world, but the reaction to the St Tropez photos shows how sharply the royal household divided over her place in it — with the Queen willing to keep the relationship alive, and Prince Philip finished with it.
