BEFORE WE BEGIN : THE BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY IS ON MY MIND

We will begin the month of April shortly: 

Last February 2025, I featured Lilly Langtry, a mistress of King Edward VII (when he was still Prince Edward) as Mistress of the Month.  My primary source for that month's posts came from Ian Graham's book titled "Scarlet Women" in which she was one of the women Graham wrote about. A couple months ago I went to a library where there were several books on King Edward VII (Great Britain) and his 'love life'. I took them home and read them.

In the last several months, partly because of the Jeffrey Epstein Sex Trafficking Scandal, which has only gotten more scandalous since the release of the Epstein Files, I've been thinking about the former Prince Andrew (stripped of his titles, honorariums, and all opportunities to work for Great Britain as a member of the Royal Family, now simply Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor) though he was raised as the second to the throne. I've been thinking of Sarah Ferguson, Andrew's wife and best friend since their divorce years ago. Both have been essentially banished and removed. 

I featured Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, and back in September of 2023. I found her memoir unexpectedly well written and interesting.

I've been reading news articles and listening to media coverage about the Royal Family and the issues they must deal with. I sometimes listen to the YouTube station which is owned by and stars Lady Colin Campbell, who I featured here in June of 2024. (Lady Colin Campbell is also a book author, famous for publishing the first book about Princess Diana and Prince Charles and their marriage.)

I don't agree with all her opinions but, as one of her son's said recently, she is a character and perceptive and often right.

Lady Colin Campbell discussed the reality of wives and mistresses in her family and among the British settled in Jamaica in her memoir about growing up in "Daughter of Narcissus".

She doesn't much like Prince Harry or his wife, Princess Meghan, and she once defended Prince Andrew, until she learned he was lying. And, as you most recent readers know, I devoted January of this year to Virginia Guiffre, and her book about being an Epstein sex trafficked survivor. Prince Andrew is in deep trouble as a result of his involvement with the evil Epstein.

I wonder, if it's true that, perhaps, the ex-Prince Andrew and his, as I see it, sex addiction which got him in such terrible trouble, is an inherited trait. Is it genetic? Nature versus nurture? Does it have something to do with being born into high status and riches, with what would seem to be extreme opportunity, but also strong expectations and limitations on what he might do with his blessed life?  Prince Harry was long a second to the throne just as Andrew was, and he has established a life very different than what was expected of him but, though I sense he is happy in his marriage and with his children, he is condemned for abandoning those expectations that he would be a helpmate to his older brother, future King Prince William. But let's face it. Harry certainly did some running around and partying and had other relationships while remaining unmarried until he settled down with his wife, however controversial they are. (Lady Colin Campbell is just one British media person who heavily condemns him and his wife. Frankly, I don't know how it is that the both of them are still standing because it seems there is nothing either of them can do without international criticism.)

These days the privacy granted pre-Internet of persons of high birth and high achievement by the media is gone. Back in the day, the British tabloids might have called Andrew "Randy Andy" but the details were generally kept from us. What emerged were well researched books about these interesting persons who, it could be said, had the world in their hands.

Of all the British princes and kings who have had mistresses, perhaps it is true that Edward Albert, Prince of Wales who became King Edward VII, was among King's who had mistresses, the British Royal most known to be a sex addict. Lillie Langtry was not his first lover, but his first well known and accepted (i.e. official) mistress after his marriage. Said to have been introduced to sex very young - perhaps fourteen - in Paris, the young prince, well before his marriage at twenty-one, was reportedly avid for sex and also went to prostitutes. Though he had some work before he became King and more after, he went about his official duties distracted by and intent on pleasure.

I will be focused on this monarch, who was Queen Elizabeth II's great grandfather, and his mistresses over the next months. I hope you will join in our discovery!

Missy

VIRGINIA LOUISE ROBERTS GIUFFRE : WE CAN'T NOT HEAR WHAT SHE'S SAID : FORCED PROSTITUTION AND INTERNATIONAL SEX TRAFFICKING : A DEVASTATING BOOK

 

VIRGINIA ROBERTS GIUFFRE

Born in California 1983 - Died by Suicide 2025 Australia

Nobody's Girl, written with a ghost writer, American award-winning journalist Amy Wallace, is the work of Virginia Robert Giuffre, was just one of the many women who were raped by the mysteriously wealthy New Yorker, and it'll hurt your heart to read it. 

I'm dedicating this month to a woman who was never a Mistress, or a Courtesan, but whose influence may be so profound that people around the world may begin to question their attitudes about women and sex; Virginia Roberts Giuffre was forced into prostitution and was sex trafficked to powerful and elite men as a nubile teenager. Virginia escaped two years of being trafficked by gaining the confidence of Jeffrey Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell. She actually agreed to carry and give birth to a baby - to hand it over to them - if they would finally send her to massage school as had initially been promised her. They sent her to Thailand to school there, through what seemed to be both fateful and spiritual means in that country, she met a man who quickly married her and took her to a new life in Australia. At the time of her death, they were estranged. There had been intense pressure and threats to her life. Virginia was one of the women who came forth to tell; eventually Epstein's death by suicide while in jail became suspicious - as is her suicide. 

Her book reveals herself to be, first and foremost, a loving mother of three children, and a woman who had tremendous challenges to overcome, including post traumatic stress syndrome. For their sake, I so wish she could have held on.

As you know, me and my blog stand for Choice but I'm realistic about it. I idealistically want everyone to have Choice all the time which includes never ever having sex when you don't want to - even when married. Let it be said that there are forces upon us that are cultural and societal and religious and - well, we often have to make the best of our situation. When it comes to who gets sex trafficked, while some people are abducted, many are lied to or solicited. It would seem that predators know when a child is someone that no one cares about.

Many of the women I've featured here at Mistress Manifesto created lives for themselves when women had very little Choice. They were remarkable enough in their time and place, because they survived or because they became famous or infamous enough to have books or written about them or to be in the media. Here we are in 2026 and things have changed for the better, in some parts of the world, but s l o w l y. Women generally have more opportunities than we've had throughout history, especially to financially support ourselves through education, employment, or business, and yet, sex trafficking, the absolute worst, an especially vile form of forced prostitution, a form of horrible violence to the body and the psyche, continues. And it would not exist if certain men (and some women) were not interested in sexually abusing women (and some men), including infants, boys and girls, and teens too young to be legal. It must end.

For Virginia, and many of those who have experienced being sex trafficked, first usually groomed or tricked into providing sexual "services" to strangers and others who have no respect or love for them, life can be emotionally and psychologically difficult forevermore. Virginia, though the years had gone by and she had established herself as a wife and mother in  Australia, did speak out, and so did many others; it's possible that the number of victims of Epstein, and his cohort, Ghislaine Maxwell, personally abused goes closer to a thousand. He like the All-American look, the girl-next-door, who was skinny and looked twelve to seventeen years old. Some of them didn't have the terrible experiences Virginia had before and were virgins.

Reading the book, I learned that Virginia had been molested and raped as a child for years. She had been a runaway whose parents had committed her as a fifteen year old juvenile delinquent to a program that was also abusive to the teens in its care. When she ran away from it, she was raped by two predators, one who strangled her, one who was running a fake modeling agency. Eventually the program came under scrutiny and the operator of the fake modeling agency was arrested, but not just because of her experiences. She felt her powerlessness and had no one at that point to tell. She had panhandled and done drugs - and would do them - including acid, ecstasy, Xanax, and cocaine. She had gone hungry at times. She had no money. She had been turned into a prostitute and was a high school drop out before she ever got her job at Donald Trumps Mar-A-Lago Club, where she was recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell, to be exploited by herself and Jeffrey Epstein. Sadly, it would seem that in Virginia's family her mother may have well known that her daughter was being molested by her father, as well as her father's friend.

About half this book is dedicated to what happened after years had gone by and she was contacted by Maxwell, who basically stated that Epstein was being prosecuted and wanted to know if Virginia was going to tell all. She was for many years protective of her family, unaware of the way some "journalists" operate, and torn because she didn't want what happened to her to keep happening. Eventually she activated.

Virginia committed suicide months before the publication of this book, which is being read around the world, creating discussions about sexuality, prostitution, and criminality. (My local library had over a thousand people on the wait lists for the book in text, audio, and electronic versions, before they even got a copy in to borrow!) Virginia's co-author, Amy Wallace, has done a valiant job of being interviewed about her interactions with Virginia as they wrote this book together. And in November 2025, when the House and Senate of the United States decided to vote to have the Epstein Files opened to the world, many of the women who survived their victimization stood together and credited Virginia - her honesty - with moving the cause of ending sex trafficking ahead. This has become a discussion of what people in power can and often do to those who do not have it.

There are many who believe that Virginia was pressured into suicide, that she feared for her life and that of her family members, because there were very rich and successful people who she had sex with, people who could (and in my opinion, should) loose everything, if what they did becomes known. President Donald Trump has also been criticized for adding the reveal of the Epstein File documents to his campaign promises and then putting up a great big fuss about their release.

Chances are you have met someone who has been molested or raped before the age of 18. You also likely know someone who is a sex offender. It is never good or right and I believe Virginia Giuffre intended to help other's who had experiences like hers begin to heal.

Although my blog includes 'adult subjects' when I excerpt from this book, I must be careful, as I do not get explicit in my posts and also will not censor by changing the wording. I trust that my readers, who want more details, will want to read this riveting book as well.

I hope to do my best this month to honor Virginia Roberts Guiffre!

Missy

I've listened to dozens of YouTube podcasts, including those by Lady Colin Campbell, concerning what has happened in the Royal family and in Great Britain because of the scandal; Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles III of the United Kingdom, was stripped of his titles and forced into an exile from all things Royal last fall. Not only have I featured Lady Colin Campbell, who had originally defended Prince Andrew and considered Virginia to be a teenage prostitute, but I dedicated a month to Sarah, Duchess of York, also stripped of her titles and all things Royal, who was once married to Prince Andrew and who lived in the same (granted, very large house) with him for decades. 

I think the situation with Andrew and Sarah and Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell is likely far more complicated that we can imagine.

You may be interested in these archived posts:

April 2021

Special Topic

SEX TRAFFICKING : MORE PEOPLE ARE SEX TRAFFICKED TODAY THEN THERE WERE EVER AFRICAN SLAVES IN AMERICA

September 2023

SARAH DUCHESS OF YORK : STANDING BY HER MAN NO MATTER WHAT : DIVORCED TO HER EX HUSBAND PRINCE ANDREW : HONORARY MISTRESS OF THE MONTH

June 2024

THE ECCENTRIC and HIGHLY OPINIONATED LADY COLIN CAMPBELL (GEORGIE ZIADIE) :  MISTRESSES WERE UNDERSTOOD A CERTAIN WAY  As a note, Lady Colin Campbell has stated on her YouTube channel that she thinks that Virginia was a teenage prostitute who recruited other girls who were also hurt.

C 2026 Mistress Manifesto - BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

ACCEPTANCE and ENDURANCE : THE BEGINNING OF DIVORCED TO HER HUSBAND and THE DAY I SAW THEM TOGETHER

Page 247 :  "In June 1993, Andrew and I were seen together at dinner, and then the press snapped him kissing me at Balmoral.  The papers were full of stories about our rumored reconciliation.  The Firm as all aflutter --- why couldn't I just limp off into the sunset like a good little victim?  Suddenly, without consulting either of us, the Firm put out a release to announce our "formal separation."  Which did absolutely nothing, except to reveal the depths of the courtier's concern. In fact, their worries were misplaced.  While my husband and I were feeling easier with each other, if only because the pressure was off, we were essentially playing for time.  We had no set plan for our future -- and no intention of expunging our past.

I was never one to erase a man from my life after a romance was done.  People cannot be reduced to "girlfriend" or "boyfriend" -- when they share something good and real, it lives on forever.  Eight years after we broke up, Paddy McNally remained one of my closest, most trusted friends. More than a year after our separation, Andrew and I still loved each other and we didn't care what the world thought."

(Sarah was inspired by reading about Queen Victoria and her love of her husband Prince Albert, who died at age forty-two.  Victoria remained in love with him her entire life - another forty years or so.  Sarah went on to write  Victoria and Albert : A Life at Osborne House.  Published in 1991, some of the proceeds went to the Prince Andrew Charitable Trust. Secondly, in 1993, she published Travels With Queen Victoria.  Both books were well received.  She says the research and writing of these books helped her understand both Victoria and Queen Elizabeth's sense of duty and sacrifice.  She herself, felt at that point that she had failed miserably.)

Page 282 : "On Wednesday, April 17 (1996), twenty nice uncontested divorce were processed at the family division of the High Court in London.  At the bottom of the list was this one : HRH The Duke of York v. HRH The Duchess of York.   ( A week later,  Andrew and I would have dinner with both lawyers and their wives at a restaurant near Windsor.  We were setting new standards for amicability.)"

Page 287 : "On May 30 (1996), while my daughters and I watched Ballymoss go through his paces at Hickstead, a clerk at Somerset House dated a non-descript sheet of paper, then swung down a red rubber stamp.... My divorce was final."

***

Since this book was published in 1996, Sarah and Andrew continue to be housemates and best friends and have lived at Royal Lodge, Windsor for years. It's a large house but home.  Their daughters are grown and married and the long divorced couple are grandparents to three.

How have they managed the last twenty six years?

She said "We are co-parents who support each other and believe that family is everything.  I'm proud of the job we have done together in bringing up our children and sustaining a strong family unit.  Our bywords are communication, compromise, and compassion."  February 2023 to Hello Magazine.

And now my story...

Long ago I was at an event that The Duke and Duchess of York came to. Word got out that they were coming and suddenly there was a set up between where their limo would pull up and they would get out and walk into the building. A barrier to keep photographers several feet away was set up. The photographers showed up; every kind of camera. Sarah had a Lady In Waiting with her to whom she passed bouquets of flowers off to. She was the epitome of courtesy. Not an Anglophile, but having met some celebrities, I could still feel the excitement in the air. There was great curiosity about them.

I was astonished at how gorgeous they both were. Sarah's hair was thick, not a stray hair. Her complexion creamy. I thought she was well dressed - conservatively - but certainly not frumpy.  And she had jewels in her hair that you could imagine were worth millions. The two of them glowed with health. They were blissfully happy.  They seemed so unified, so in love, I could not imagine that they would have their troubles and end the romance in divorce. One was left with the knowing that yes, these people from the highest society of England were in fact different.

A little while later, the building crawling with Secret Service (really!) I and a friend of mine entered the event. A crowd of perhaps a hundred people were polite but well around them. We never approached or tried to make our way closer. They stayed maybe a half hour and then were whisked away. Leaving us to feel that the event lacked luster now that they were gone.

Missy

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto - BlogSpot

THE WEDDING, THE HONEYMOON, THE REALIZATION THAT THE MARRIAGE ISN'T WORKING

Wedding gifts had come in from around the world and were stored in the Buckingham Palace ballroom.  When Sarah and Andrew married there were 1,800 guess in Westminster Abbey. Her parents had united to throw a dinner dance for the couple.  Sarah Ferguson, called Fergie in the media, wore a coronet of gardenias - his favorite flower - in her hair and a ivory dress that she'd lost twenty-six pounds to fit into by eating mostly meat and oranges. It had a seventeen foot rain. Horses pulled The Glass Coach, she and her father inside, waving to the crows.  A million people lined the one mile route. Sarah Ferguson's new title was Princess Andrew and Duchess of York, as well as Countess of Inverness and Baroness of Killyleagh.  She now outranked Princess Margaret, The Queens's sister, and Princess Anne, The Queen's daughter. Once the marriage books were signed, her flowery coronet was replaced with a diamond tiara .

On the HMS Britannia, the Royal Yacht, with a crew of 276 yet, there was just the two of them aboard. But on the way back from Portugal other members of the Royal Family were let on.  From this point on privacy and time together would be at a minimum.

Within days upon the return home Andrew received an assignment a hundred fifty miles from London.  As a navel wife she could not expect him to be home much.  He would be home on the average forty-two days a years.

Sarah was left to just get on with it.  She felt isolated and full of self doubt.  And she was expected to do royal engagements to represent her new, Royal, family.

Page 115 : "I now shared Andrew's  private secretary, who coordinated our public lives, and his equerry, the number two man, an officer of secondment from the military.  But I worked most directly with my lady-in-waiting, my personal secretary, my dresser, and a lady clerk or two.  Also at my service were two protection officers, the household valet, my chauffeur, and various Palace Butlers and footmen...

Page 116: "I would ultimately collect 15 fluffy formal ball gowns, for state affairs and top-tier dinners; another 25 long dressed for slightly less formal occasions; 40 cocktail dresses; 150 day suits; 60 hats and 200 pairs of shoes.  .... 

Sarah had to change clothes three or four times a day and get quick about it.  Everything, from wardrobe, to food from the kitchen for dinner the next day had to be determined at least the day before.  The was no kitchen in the apartment, no food if she got a midnight urge to eat.

Socially she went everywhere. Sarah soon got her confidence about meeting people and speaking in public, but she felt lonely and alienated. 

Celebrated in the press, Sarah also felt the challenge personally. She attempted to participate in every sport, even if she performed badly.  She wanted to be a 'sport." In her effort to please she decided she would learn to fly a helicopter, just as her husband, Prince Andrew, did. First she learned to fly small fixed winged planes.  Then in 1987 she got her helicopter license.  Would it never be enough? When Sarah went on a rugged expedition in Canada's Northwest Territory that included a two week canoe trip, she wondered what would be. She wanted to spend more time with her husband.

***

Through all this she also experienced pregnancy twice.  By the time she had their first child, Beatrice, Sarah sensed the marriage was in trouble and that the connection she had with Andrew was weakening. She was not given the permission to be a typical navy wife and live near whatever station he was assigned to.  She followed him on a trip to Australia, leaving the baby at home to be cared for by others, and was accused of being a bad mother. People were also tired of Fergie and her hijinks.  Princess Diana's popularity went up while hers went down. That should have been a bit of relief.

***

Page 166 : ... "Less than three years into my marriage, as the monarchy teetered in a new and uncertain time, The Firm would have its scapegoat, its maiden for the pyre.  Always considerate, she had brought her own matches and kindling.... She would be cooked to order."

Page 169 : "The reality was something else.  For I had married the second son, and that made all the difference.  While Andrew received a moderate sum from the Civil List, it went for the cost of official engagements and for staff and office expenses.  As for my husband's personal income, the Royal Navy might provide free room and board and a chance to see the world, but it was no place to make one's fortune. In all our years together, Andrew's income never exceeded $50.000.

***

Sarah went on to detail how she - and Andrew - came to be terribly in debt, partly it was generosity to staff, but also a shopping habit, with much concern about the right clothes, after being considered overly bowed and dumpy in the late 1980's.

Not given enough to pay the bills and told that as a royal she could not work, Sarah rebelled and made a first attempt to earn money. She turned her helicopter piloting experience into to children's books. Budgie the Little Helicopter and Budgie at Bendicks Point came out in 1989. Over time Sarah, Duchess of York earned about half a million dollars from these books.

But as for the marriage, it was not working.

Sarah told Queen Elisabeth and Prince Phillip that she could not cope with the separations from Andrew. Prince Phillip was especially unkind.

Page 175: "And so Andrew and I carried on in our two distant worlds. By 1989 we were sharing less and less, till we lost the stitch of fabric we'd been weaving together..."

Excerpts chosen by me - Missy

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ANDREW SAYS I LOVE YOU : SANDRINGHAM SLAP STICK and QUEEN ELIZABETH APPROVES

Excerpts:   page 82-83

"As Andrew would acknowledge months later, on television, our romance was no "thunderbolt." It was more like a plant with good southern exposure; growing slowly , but thriving by the day.  On occasion I would join him for dinner at the Palace; other times he would park his green Jaguar (protection officer included) outside 40 Lavender Gardens, and we'd dine in my tiny kitchen... At first it was hard to fathom that I was serving baked beans to the Sovereign's second son, but that distanced feeling soon passed.....  We played silly games; we acted like children together.  We liked each other before we loved.

I had dinner with Paddy that autumn and broke it off.  He let me go freely and graciously - it was, I think, what he had hoped would come to pass.  Because he felt that Andrew was a better man for me and that I should be with a younger person, who could give me what I needed.

For New Years Eve (1985) Andrew invited me out to Sandringham, the Queen's private estate in Norfolk.  We were getting serous, all right; a few weeks before, Andrew had asked me to address him by his first name."

(Arriving there, sweating and scared) Page 84:

"Then Andrew staged his sneak attack. As I got out of my car, on that first crisp day of 1986, he said, "I love you." I felt like jumping back in the car and getting out again, because I knew what I wanted to answer but my tongue was knotted, and so I actually screamed.  And when Andrew laughed in response, I just crumbed at the knees.....

My entrance was suitably grand.  No sooner had Andrew brought me a drink than I tripped over the piano leg and sent it splashing over the sofa. Then, as I curtseyed to the Queen, my boyfriends' mother, I kicked one of her dogs. It was a glancing blow, but corgis are a melodramatic breed, and you would have thought the little yapper was bound for the Royal Kennels in the sky..."

(Missy here : I'm laughing out loud!)

Andrew proposed some time after the meeting of the Queen, and then he asked the Queen's  permission to marry Sarah, the commoner.  Sarah was twenty-six years old.  So was Andrew. Sarah gave up her apartment and moved into Buckingham Palace. Though there were 600 rooms in the palace and six of them in Andrew's bachelor quarters became home. It was a large and already decorated apartment with no kitchen. She was chauffeured to work with a protection officer. Meanwhile Andrew was in London for naval officer training and they saw each other frequently. Sarah became the  latest news in the tabloids as well as main stream press. For some time there was nothing she could do wrong. Her spontaneous behavior, even the gaffs, were embraced as just what the Royal Family needed - a breath of fresh air and she was forgiven everything. Soon her husband would be gone most of the time and she would become the newest member of The Firm to make public appearances and speeches.  

I'll continue the story in the next posts!

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto - Blogspot.

THE COURTSHIP OF SARAH FERGUSON : SWEET JOKESTER PRINCE ANDREW and THE GIRL WHO COULD MAKE COFFEE NERVOUS

How did commoner Sarah Ferguson start up with Prince Andrew, second son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip?

Here is how she tells it:

Excerpts page 77-78-79- from Sarah's own memoir

"Given Dads's polo connections, my orbit continued to intersect the Royal Family's every now and again.... I will never forget the first time I met the Prince of Wales at a Guards Polo Club drinks party.  I was eighteen years old...  (Her mom and the future Princess Diana's mom were childhood chums.) It was only natural, then, that I'd get invited to the occasional cast-of-thousands dance at Windsor Castle - for Andrew's twenty-first birthday, for example, and later for Edward's. But the big one came in the spring of 1985, when I found a heavy bond envelope in our postal slot. It was from Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Blair Stewart-Wilson, Deputy Master of the Royal Household, requesting "the pleasure of your company at the Queen's House Party at Windsor Castle during the week of Royal Ascot."

(*Sarah got together a wardrobe that would pass and headed to Windsor... Her boyfriend Paddy McNally drove her there.)

...On my bedside table was a card embossed with the Queen's cypher, listing the four day schedule of mealtimes, along with a seating plan for the day. For lunch I had been placed between a vice-admiral and Prince Andrew, then on leave from his duties on the HMS Brazen.  More jitters.  I had seen Andrew on occasion since our childish games of tag, and one of those occasions had left me red faced...

...I was ultra nervous now, and as he reached across the table to get a paper, I somehow thought he was leaning towards me for a good-morning kiss.  So I gave him one, and he looked at me and said, "Oh, thank you very much!" 

"Oh, I didn't mean to do that!" I cried, which he must have found quite hilarious.  It honestly hadn't been deliberate - just another Fergie fiasco.  And now, just my luck, I was seated almost on top of him, where I'd be at the mercy of his famous needling.  (I had yet to suspect that matchmaker Diana had engineered this.)

.... When I turned (to speak to him at dinner), I was struck by how handsome he was in his morning suit, and soon my worries had flown.  Andrew was easy, and I felt relaxed with him, for me a rare condition --- even though I addressed him as "Sir" as per protocol.

We both knew the same idiot jokes; we both loved a good prank. ...

Out of such humble beginnings came a great and lasting friendship, one that endures today.

As I came to know Andrew that week, he seemed like a very charming, gentle giant who had spring magically from the woodwork. Now a lamp shone into my forest, and I'd been rescued buy this great looking man with a blinding smile.

Small gifts began to flatter me in Clapham; a rose cut from the Palace garden, a romantic letter. Later that summer I was invited to Balmoral; more terror...

I took him aside and told him that I'd been going out with Paddy, and I hoped he didn't mind, and he said, "Why should I mind?  I like you!  I couldn't care less about that."  That was a very good reaction, I thought.  Here was a man taking me as I was, without prerequisites or conditions - who knew what he believed and didn't mind what others thought.  Nor was I ever jealous at the gossip of Andrew with some other lady.  He cared for me, and that was enough.

***

Excerpts from the book, selected by me!

Some notes:

Diana is of course Princess Diana.  Sarah had received an invitation for one and went to the wedding of Diana and Charles by herself.  Diana would continue to be a good friend to Sarah for some years.  She provided cloth for Sarah to make a dress suitable for the Royal wedding and as the courtship continued with Andrew,  Diana lent Sarah clothing that was suitable for various events. She also gave her shoes as they wore the same size.  From another source I know what that size was, so you ladies with big feet will be happy to know they wear the equivalent of an American size ten.

Upon her entry into public life, Fergie was hailed as "a breath of fresh air," because of her naturalness and love of fun...

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto -  BlogSpot

Interested in the British Royal Family or King's Mistresses? Try searching for "Great Britain," or Diana Princess of Wales, Camilla Parker Bowles...

SARAH DUCHESS OF YORK : STANDING BY HER MAN NO MATTER WHAT : DIVORCED TO HER EX HUSBAND PRINCE ANDREW : HONORARY MISTRESS OF THE MONTH

The news that Sarah, Duchess of York, has had surgery and is determined to heal from breast cancer, with ex-husband and best friend, Prince Andrew of York, by her side, sparked me to make Sarah, and her exemplary relationship with Andrew, the subject of this months posts.

I always think of memoirs and autobiographies as the best resource when I'm researching.  Oh, I know that many memoirs are written to promote a personality and their reputation.  I expected Sarah Ferguson's memoir to be full of apologies, an attempt to regain her reputation after being called out for various misdeeds - cheating on Andrew or running up debt.  I was surprised to find that Sarah Ferguson's memoir was intelligent, insightful, and eloquent. It certainly rings true. She is a far more substantial person than I imagined. Had my notions about her been too influenced by tabloids? Well, this book gives the details of the media as friend and then enemy, but worse, the way she was treated by The Firm. With co-author Jeff Coplan, the Duchess of York, long happily divorced from Prince Andrew, third child of the late Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and Prince Andrew of Greece, created a well written and interesting book.

Was Sarah ever a Mistress?  Well maybe, in the first serious relationship she had with an older man, Paddy McNally. A man who graciously let her go when she fell in love with Andrew, then Duke of York, Prince Andrew.  Paddy and Sarah stayed friends.  

Daughter of divorced parents, raised more by her strict father, the emotional man who loved her, whom she called Dads, than her mother who went into another and long distance relationship, Sarah found herself floundering.  She was an insecure girl who aimed to please in order to be accepted while often missing the point. Her mother followed her heart and moved to Argentina to be with the man who would be her second husband, taking leave as a parent. Sarah also followed her heart into her first serious relationship with Paddy. Was she concerned with preserving her virginity?  Not as her generation came into adulthood. She was not holding out in hopes of being eligible to marry a King or a Prince. She was a commoner who was expected to marry very well, someone from her own set, not in the peerage but adjacent.

Sarah tells the story of a childhood filled with determination and spunk, though she experienced being a misfit time and time again. With curly red hair, hips she thought of as too wide, and a tendency to do first and think about it later, she found her athletics, her love of horses and riding them, to be the very activity that kept her going. Dads was involved in the sport of Polo. She lived for riding horses and country life. Meeting in childhood because of Dads's link to the Royal family, Andrew and Sarah encountered each other growing up. The teenage Sarah was aware that she was not the most slender, the most academic, or a member of the peerage but Sarah was destined to marry Prince Andrew, who clearly found her companionable.  He loved Sarah's fun. The two became friends first and forever. 

With mom across the world, Sarah was sent to a boarding school.

Excerpt page 47: "Never was a fish more out of water.  I was a country girl, a sporting girl, a wild thing who loved fresh air and running free.  And here I was plunked into a rambling old mansion in the middle of town, with no grounds to speak of, pressed to keep pace with kid sophisticates from show business families. I used to run for miles, but now I never ran because the urban fumes choked me. I had always slept with my windows open, cocooned by layers of bedclothes, but here it wasn't safe to open windows at night, and so I parboiled in the bed and cursed central heating. ....  When you have an adolescent weight problem, ballet school is not quite the place to be,  Hurst Lodge (her boarding school) was populated by a colony of sylphlike creatures, impossibly slim and supple as they did their splits, with mirrors everywhere and here came good old Fergie Form, bobbing along, wincing at her own reflection." ......

Though Sarah knew her strict father had the best intentions raising here, her grandmother, Honorable Doreen Wright - her mom's mom, was the one who came to help on weekends.  Sarah says on page 53, "Unconditional love was a core principle for Grummy, and I was a prime beneficiary.  She had been a hard, unyielding mother with Mum, and there still was no getting one over on her, but we could talk about anything, from religion to the Poll. When I got older she'd be okay with all my boyfriends, in contrast to Dads's stern disapproval. Because she never judged me, I confided in her freely, even let the real Sarah peep out now and then."

After graduating from boarding school, Sarah was given little choice in what more education her Dads was willing to afford. She could either go to a finishing school called Winkfield Place to learn to cook and arrange flowers and become a good homemaker or Queen's Secretarial College, which is what she did. After graduation, to get a start, she got a monthly stipend from her dad and took a temp job with a public relations firm In Knightsbridge, London, with a starting salary of $6,000 a year. She was eighteen years old and began to work hard and play hard. Sarah's weekends were consumed with a repetition of house parties and after-work cocktail parties and shoot weekends, the typical entertainments of the young upper class.  She rented with a roommate in humble circumstances. When she took a different job working for an art gallery, she also had to work a second job on the weekends as a salesclerk in a maternity store.

Sarah was still considered to be a Sloan Ranger, which she defines on page 60 as "that well connected set of smug, socially ambitious preppie." But even when she didn't have the money to go shopping, Sarah was experiencing her independence.  On page 70: Sarah wrote "The Sloanes are quite an astounding species -- they will give our future anthropologists a run for their money  What makes them special and distinct is that they think they are frightfully upper class when actually they are not, and so they must try harder than those at the very top.  The Court at Buckingham Palace is full of them....  They all went to the same boarding schools, where little Muffy and Daphne played frightfully well together and became lifelong chums or muckers.  Their dress code was ridged, if eccentric: Laura Ashley shirts, with a frill up top and pearls over the frill; a cardy over the shoulders, tweedy skirts, trailing down near the calf; navy blue tights; practical shoes without heels.  Lightly scruffy, in other words, but expensive.

Sarah would rather go skiing at Verbier, Switzerland. In 1982 it was there that she met Paddy McNally. Sarah, adored him because he was so down to earth, not posh or putting on the social graces. He was the father of two boys.

Page 73  Paddy was probably Dads' worst nightmare: not the right age, not in the Household Calvary, just a man named McNally in motor racing.  Here she goes again....  But I loved Paddy for all the things he wasn't; for the phony graces he rejected, the airs he'd refused to put on, even after he had done quite well for himself.  He had a sharp, practical mind, a large and open heart --- he was just himself, straight down the line.

Sarah wanted to marry Paddy but the age difference meant they were at different times in their lives and though he said he needed to do the right thing, she didn't bring marriage up. Because of Paddy's connections Sarah was able to get a dream job in London. In 1984 she became an acquisitions editor for fine art books. Her salary was still not much - no more than *18,000 a year. But it was a creative job  and included travel.

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So why have I elected Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York as an Honorary Mistress this month here at Mistress Manifesto - BlogSpot, not because of her relationship with Paddy, but because of her marriage with Prince Andrew?  It's because she's lived with and stayed best friends with her ex-husband. Aren't we all aware of the divorced who won't give up torturing each other?  The ones who put their children in the middle of an ongoing battle?  While so many wonder when exactly they should give up and accept the situation, Sarah has been exemplarity. There was no reason that their daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, both who married commoners, should suffer the kind of shunning Sarah suffered until, I hate to say it, her father-in-law, Prince Phillip, who apparently hated her, had died. The Princesses had the advantage of, in effect, an intact relationship between their parents. Though Royal Lodge is huge and has many bedrooms, home was the same house for Sarah and Andrew and their daughters. More recently included in the doings of the Royals, perhaps at her daughter's insistence, I have in the past felt sadness for Sarah who was punished for years with isolation and exclusion.

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The Jeffery Epstein sex trafficking scandals have included Prince Andrew, once called Randy Andy, who may have been targeted for grooming himself by the ambitious Epstein who was no doubt a sex addict as well as chronic molester and rapist of women too young to give consent. I've researched Epstein, including the involvement by the now imprisoned Ghislaine Maxwell in locating nubiles for her once-boyfriend and boss. She was friends with Prince Andrew first and both Epstein and Maxwell befriended the Prince.

I strongly feel that Epstein was setting up honey-traps, offering forbidden and illegal sex with girls to powerful men, leaders of the world and in finance, as well as celebrities, in order to blackmail them for money.  The money furthered his reputation as mysteriously rich. As time goes by more and more is revealed about his connections but the question is who took the bait or who dealt with him only for business or charity causes.

I watched the interview Prince Andrew did, trying to clear himself from cooperation with Epstein or charges that he had sex with a seventeen year old.  The media called it a "train wreck" interview but I believed the Prince that he did not recall having sex with the woman when she was seventeen. I believed him until he said he never sweats. (We all do, some more than others.) Do I think Andrew has slept around?  I sure do!  But what of Sarah, the devoted ex-wife, raising the Queens grand-daughters with Andrew and now the carer of the deceased Queens's precious Corgi dogs? She believes he is innocent. She says he's been great father and is a good man.

Sarah has stood by her man, the love of her life, the father of her children, and a man who stood by her when she was going through her own scandals... For while she became a person who quit the Firm, she never quit finding love for Andrew.  And I think he knows this, as he enters his senior years, and her love for him is what has and will give him reason to live.

Sarah and Andrew announced their separation in 1992 after six years of marriage. By then she had become infamous when photographed with another man, one she did not actually have an affair with.  Then, while separated, Sarah had an affair with for some time with the man who was supposedly sucking her toes. I say this was goof-balling around and the photos had a bit to do with being stalked and spied upon by unethical journalists and probably only the photos that could be taken as sexy were reproduced. Still, the Queen was furious with her. 

Andrew had barely been home during their marriage, averaging forty two days a year - one day in ten.  They had managed two children.  Four years later, after the separation, the divorce was finalized. Yet after moving houses with the girls, the two of them settled into co-existance. Neither has ever remarried, leading to rumors that before their lives on earth are over, perhaps now that Prince Phillip has died, and Queen Elizabeth has also, they might remarry.  Sarah says no, she is happy with their relationship as it is. They have been a consistency in each other's lives for over forty years.

Sarah Ferguson has run up debt and also attempted to earn her own money, through writing children's books and romance novels, and diet plan advocacy. It's estimated she's earned a million or more just from those books.  Though not university educated she has managed to work in the publishing business, and to write other books, including romance novels.

Sarah was shunned from family events for years and as a divorced woman did not expect to be included in state affairs such as the Coronation of King Charles III.

This month I'll excerpt from Sarah's book and perhaps together we will come to understand her relationship with Prince Andrew that began when she was just launched into the adult world and how it has endured.

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Interested in more about Great Britain's Royal's and their Mistresses?  Try clicking on the label Great Britain, or search for King's Mistresses!

A Note: In July Sarah was diagnosed with breast cancer and had surgery and is undergoing treatment. Andrew is by her side.  I don't know what these two have been through but I feel as if they have a karmic relationship. 

There must be a million ways to love and one of those ways is theirs.