Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson are preparing to vacate Royal Lodge in 2026, but once upon a time, they had a fairytale wedding at London's Westminster Abbey. Their marriage was watched by roughly 500 million people around the world, and bubbly Fergie was seen as a breath of fresh air in the Royal Family. But their relationship quickly unraveled, and in his new book Entitled, author Andrew Lownie shares Ferguson's mother's thoughts on the matter.
Speaking of her former son-in-law, Susan Barrantes told Italian magazine Gente, "He's a good-looking boy and has a heart of gold to the point where he would be without any money himself to help someone, but he just hasn't got any character...absolutely none."
She added, "If only he had character, perhaps his marriage wouldn't have broken up."
The former Duke and Duchess of York separated in 1992, just months ahead of Princess Diana and Prince Charles, and divorced in 1996. Senior members of the Royal Family sat down with Andrew to have an intervention of sorts after both Andrew and Sarah had extramarital affairs, with Lownie writing that Ferguson even invited one lover to Andrew's 30th birthday party.
Amid their 1992 separation, Ferguson went from a beloved member of the Royal Family to the "most unpopular" in polls, per Lownie. "Having announced their separation, the Yorks perhaps understood that their royal lustre had been tarnished," the author wrote.
Barrantes's comments came during "various leaks to discredit Sarah" during their separation, per Entitled. Ferguson's mother added that her daughter was fiercely determined to retain custody of her daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie—an ironic point considering Barrantes abandoned her own young family to move to Argentina with her lover in the early '70s.
