The complex relationship between Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, is a story woven with childhood friendship, sisterly bonds, and eventual estrangement. From introducing Sarah to Prince Andrew to not speaking at the time of Diana's tragic death in 1997, their connection was fraught with the immense pressures of royal life.
The Fateful Holiday and a Royal Crisis
In 1992, Sarah Ferguson's life was irrevocably changed when intimate holiday photographs were splashed across the world's front pages. The images depicted the Duchess, then still married to Prince Andrew, canoodling with her American businessman boyfriend, John Bryan. The most infamous picture showed Bryan kissing or licking Sarah's toes, capturing global attention and plunging her into a devastating scandal.
According to royal biographer Andrew Lownie, the nature of the photographs suggested the paparazzi had time to prepare, leading to speculation about who had tipped them off. At the time the scandal broke, Sarah was at Balmoral with the royal family. A servant present noted her bizarre reaction, claiming she acted as if "she was the person wronged", believing the photographers and newspapers were at fault for publishing the private images.
Diana's Mysterious Telephone Call
The night before the sensational pictures were published, a strange event unfolded. Princess Diana was alleged to have contacted a reporter. During this call, she issued a cryptic and eerie warning about her sister-in-law, stating simply: "The redheads in trouble".
This mysterious remark has fuelled decades of speculation. Tina Brown, a former editor of Vanity Fair and a friend of Diana's, is one royal expert who believed the Princess of Wales was herself the source of the leak to the press. This theory, however, stands in contrast to the beliefs held by Sarah and her mother, Susan, who were convinced the tip-off came from elsewhere within the royal circle.
An Unlikely Lifeline in the Aftermath
In a twist of fate, despite the rumours and their complicated history, Princess Diana became a source of support for Sarah Ferguson in the immediate aftermath of the scandal. As the controversy raged, Sarah reportedly hid away in a cottage on the vast Balmoral Estate.
It was during this tumultuous period that the two women, whose friendship had cooled, reconnected. Lownie's biography reveals that they chatted regularly on the phone, with Diana offering a listening ear to her former sister-in-law as she navigated one of the most disastrous chapters of her public life.
The story of Diana's warning remains an unresolved mystery, a haunting footnote in the saga of two of the most scrutinised women in modern royal history.
