From “toe-sucking” scandal to Epstein links: The Duchess of York’s royal humiliations
When the Duchess of York was caught in a tabloid sting appearing to offer access to her ex-husband Prince Andrew in exchange for £500,000, it looked as if things couldn’t get much worse for her. It was not exactly her first misstep in the court of public opinion, nor the court of royal opinion.
The so-called Fake Sheikh scandal in 2010, in which an undercover News of the World reporter posed as a businessman during a meeting with the Duchess, followed a series of embarrassing gaffes.
Most memorably, she had already come through an infamous incident in 1992, in which the Daily Mirror published photographs of her sunbathing topless while John Bryan, an American financial manager, sucked her toes. She was still married to the Duke at this point, though they separated that year.
If the Duchess’s popularity has waxed and waned since then, it lately seemed she was on the road to redemption. In 2023, she joined the Royal family for Christmas at Sandringham for the first time since 1991.
Only last week she was seen mingling with the royals on the steps of Westminster Cathedral while attending the funeral of the Duchess of Kent.
But it might have been naive to assume that, having weathered various storms through the years, the only way for the Duchess was up. In fact, commentators suggest, previous storms hardly rank in the same league as the latest scandal to engulf her: her extraordinary association with the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The 65-year-old Duchess expressed her regret about accepting £15,000 from the disgraced financier in an interview in 2011. Now, however, she is facing fresh questions over her links to him after emails emerged revealing that she apologized to Epstein for criticizing him in public, and called the sex offender a “steadfast, generous and supreme friend to me and my family.”
It is understood she had received aggressive threats from him and been advised to tell him whatever was necessary to stop him from taking legal action against her.
Yet following the revelations, she had been dropped as patron or ambassador of six charities by Monday afternoon, including Julia’s House, a children’s hospice, the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, and the Children’s Literacy Charity. The Teenage Cancer Trust, where the Duchess has served as a patron for 35 years, has also said it is reviewing the situation.
None of which seems to augur well for the Duchess’s chances of bouncing back again.
“I’m not sure she’s going to survive this one because mud does stick,” says royal commentator Dickie Arbiter. “It’s one thing to have financial problems, quite something else to be associated with a convicted pedophile.”
Until recently, the Duchess’s story had in some ways been a familiar one. If the public loves a redemptive arc, then Fergie’s was compelling. She was never an outsider as such, but the daughter of what she once called “country gentry with a bit of old money,” and had first met Andrew aged 12.
Still, at the end of the 1980s, just a few years after her 1986 marriage to the heir to the throne’s younger brother, she was described by a senior palace aide as “the single greatest threat to the monarchy in the current era,” according to a 2023 memoir by John Sargent, a publishing veteran who oversaw the publicity campaign for her children’s book Budgie, the Little Helicopter in 1989.
Her journey has been one of ups and downs since then. In 1996, she and the Duke of York divorced, but they remained close and still live together at Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park. Much of the bad publicity she has received has concerned her allegedly extravagant spending habits and debts. The word “hapless” is one that has constantly attached itself to her.
Up to now, however, she has managed to “get away with” negative stories “on a certain level,” according to royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams. “People think of [her as] a bouncy redhead who may no longer be a breath of fresh air but is oddly invigorating. The weird way in which she keeps at it and bounces back… has managed to get her off the hook so far as much of the public is concerned.”
Haplessness, it seems, can be forgiven, and the Duchess appeared to be on her way back into the fold. Reportedly disapproved of by the late Prince Philip, his son the King was said to have been grateful to her for sparing the royals’ blushes by persuading the Duke of York not to attend Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace last year. (At this point he was embroiled in a scandal over his links to an alleged Chinese spy.)
It was the King who invited the Duchess back to Sandringham for Christmas in 2023 after her decades away from the event, and he who allowed her to join the very public walk to church.
“As far as reputation is concerned, she had managed to skate on the English eccentric line,” says Fitzwilliams. “From a PR point of view it worked very well, because she had managed some form of amazing rehabilitation. It [was] helped by the fact that [her daughters] Beatrice and Eugenie have married happily and have families and jobs.”
When it comes to both the Duke and Duchess, transgressions are “forgotten about quite quickly,” adds Nigel Cawthorne, author of Prince Andrew: Epstein, Maxwell and the Palace.
There has also been a lot of sympathy for the Duchess following her decision to go public about her double cancer diagnosis – she learned she had breast cancer in 2023 and skin cancer last year.
But doubt hangs over whether she can survive these most recent revelations. “It’s a very, very difficult one,” says Arbiter. “Do you want to be associated with someone who’s been associated with a convicted pedophile? This is in a completely different league [to previous scandals].”
Nor is it likely to blow over any time soon. A posthumous memoir by Virginia Giuffre, who accused the Duke of York and Epstein of sexual assault, will be published next month and could contain further damaging revelations. (The Duke has denied all allegations against him).
Fitzwilliams agrees it will now be hard for the Duchess to find her way back.
“It’s deeply embarrassing for the Royal family,” he says.
In a statement to The Telegraph when the letters first emerged on Saturday, a spokesman for the Duchess said: “The Duchess spoke of her regret about her association with Epstein many years ago, and as they have always been, her first thoughts are with his victims.
“Like many people, she was taken in by his lies. As soon as she was aware of the extent of the allegations against him, she not only cut off contact but condemned him publicly, to the extent that he then threatened to sue her for defamation for associating him with pedophilia. She does not resile from anything she said then. This email was sent in the context of advice the Duchess was given to try to assuage Epstein and his threats.”
He declined to comment further following the charities dropping the Duchess as their patron.
Deputy Editor
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