Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson’s tell-all interviews should have warned palace about Meghan
Two explosive moments before Meghan Markle’s TV interview should have warned the palace of what was to come.
Attacks on the Crown from within are not new with Meghan Markle following two other royal outsiders who infamously detailed their harrowing time in “the golden cage” of Buckingham Palace.
And it is perhaps no surprise those other infamous interviews are being revisited and in Princess Diana’s case her thoughts on the palace were today trending globally to potentially an even bigger audience than the 20 million she had 25 years ago before the invent of social media.
It is almost 12 years ago to the day before Meghan’s Oprah Winfrey tell all, that the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson too broke down in tears during an interview with News Corp Australia as she revealed her years of loneliness and isolation in the royal court and had to get out to save her sanity.
And like HRH Harry and Meghan’s explosive reflections, Fergie too wondered whether it could have all been different if someone had just taken the time to listen and help.
Sarah Ferguson’s marriage to Prince Andrew ended in 1992 but by March 2009 she wondered aloud whether the breakdown was as much to blame on their life in the palace as it was their personal relationship.
Speaking from the heart, Fergie said no-one from the “firm” or palace aides prepared her for royal life as she too struggled with her mental health from public scrutiny and desperate loneliness from within what she called, the golden cage. Her husband’s royal and naval duties saw him away for weeks at a time and her only confidante at that time Lady Diana was also weighed down with commitments and her life “was not a fairytale”.
“You suddenly have to go into the golden cage, no one is around to help you,” she said.
“Diana was away a lot and doing other things and you see, who do you ask and how do you know what to do? And so then he’s (Andrew) not here and suddenly you’re living in the golden cage -- alone and getting it wrong. It’s very difficult if you are a very straightforward person like me to know the rules of the golden cage and then you are in it, then suddenly you go ‘ahhh’ and you make mistakes and then you have to either conform or not.”
She said she suffered mental health issues but could not talk to people about it at the time and life in the palace was grand but not what someone would imagine.
“I think my life was just bliss and just a dream and I think that it was fast and frightening and it’s terrifying suddenly being out in front of millions of people and not knowing what to do,’’ she said.
“Am I lacking in confidence? Yes. Why? Because you have 20 years of defamation of character in the press, the British press, that will do it. That will tear your heart out, especially if you are only in the heart. All that I am, is me, then they write the opposite and I go `But I didn’t do that or I didn’t say that or if I did I made a mistake, sorry -- ahhhh too late’. I don’t think I will ever recover. I’m going to cry now so don’t go there. I don’t think I will ever recover but you just put a team around you that are very strong … and get on with life.”
Like Meghan though she credited moments with the Queen as some comfort.
The other “bombshell” moment in royal history though came in 1995 when Harry’s mother Diana opened up to the BBC on strikingly similar topics that Sarah and Meghan would years later.
She too detailed in her shockingly raw interview the lack of guidance, friends and help from the palace as she muddled through royal life, all under the gaze of the public but in complete “isolation”. She too then suffered depression and self harm.
“When no one listens to you, or you feel no one’s listening to you, all sorts of things start to happen,” the then-34-year-old said with clips of her words trending globally again today as they eerily mirror those from Meghan.
“For instance, you have so much pain inside yourself that you try and hurt yourself on the outside because you want help, but it’s the wrong help you’re asking for. People see it as crying wolf or attention seeking.”
No doubt the royal court will look at these latest claims but whether things change for the next generation remains unclear.
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Originally published as Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson’s tell-all interviews should have warned palace about Meghan
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