Sarah Ferguson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's marriage was on the rocks by the early 1990s, with both the former Duke and Duchess of York carrying on extramarital affairs. But even though her relationship with the Royal Family was already tenuous, it was Fergie's infamous 1992 toe-sucking photo scandal that served as the nail in her coffin. As author Andrew Lownie writes in his book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, the embarrassing incident caused Princess Anne to speak her mind about the then-duchess.
Ferguson was carrying on a relationship with American businessman John Bryan before she separated from Andrew in March 1992, and that summer, the couple brought Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie on a vacation to the south of France. They rented a private villa, but unbeknownst to Sarah and John, "a large trench had been dug within a hundred yards of the villa and pool," per Lownie.
Photographers used the trench to hide out and take photos of the couple, including the famous photos of Bryan sucking on the then-Duchess of York's toes. Among the 55 photos published in the Mirror at the time were ones of "a topless Sarah rubbing sun cream on the head of her balding financial advisor" and pictures of two-year-old Princess Eugenie watching on as her mother and Bryan kissed.
Needless to say, when the Royal Family saw the papers, tempers flared—and Ferguson, who was staying at Balmoral at the time, had to face the music.
Sarah Ferguson is seen with Princess Anne during Easter Sunday services at Windsor Castle in 2024.
As Queen Elizabeth once famously wrote, "recollections may vary" when it comes to the morning Sarah's photos were published. According to Lownie, Ferguson "claimed she sat up all night drinking brandy" with royal nanny Alison Wardley, "breakfasted upstairs and let Andrew bring up the papers from breakfast."
Another account insists that Sarah "entered the breakfast room to find everyone reading the story and fled." But one Balmoral guest who was there that day told Sarah's biographer, Chris Hutchins, a much different version of the royal breakfast.
Per Lownie, the guest said "that the Princess Royal 'came close to throttling' Sarah" after seeing the toe-sucking photos, "and at dinner told her what she thought of her." It seems Queen Elizabeth didn't disagree with her daughter's opinion, as the source added, "There was not one voice raised against Anne."
Sarah Ferguson, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Princess Anne are seen at the Duchess of Kent's funeral in September.
As for the former Prince Andrew, the Balmoral guest claimed, "Prince Andrew's anger melted into sadness and he buried himself in the special reports compiled for The Queen, which she did not hesitate to let him read."
Yet another version of the story claims that Queen Elizabeth summoned the then-duchess at 9:30 a.m. that morning "to explain herself" after she was shown a press briefing about the scandal. In any case, one of the servants at the Balmoral estate is quoted by Lownie as having recalled that Sarah "acted in the strangest way."
The former palace employee added, "You would have thought she was the person wronged, as if she had every right to go on holiday with another man, kiss and cuddle him, and the only person who had behaved wrongly were the photographer and the editors who had published the pictures."
