TOabandoned That's how Sarah Ferguson supposedly feels when she was spotted in a luxury chalet in the Austrian Alps, where she has allegedly been hiding amid growing calls for her to testify about what she knew about the pedophile financier's dealings.
The royal family has reportedly not contacted her since she was stripped of her title over her and her husband's links to Jeffrey Epstein, and a friend of the former duchess told her The mirror: “Sarah is living in fear right now. She's not immune to everything that's happening. She realizes how serious everything is and she can't face it.”
With millions of Epstein files still pending release, it is up to his daughters to pick up the pieces of the shattered lives left in his wake.
Whatever his father, or even his mother, may deserve, it must not have been much fun to see Dad hauled away by the police on suspicion of misconduct in public office. While the rest of the world may have reveled in the former prince's humiliation while he was held at Aylsham Police Investigation Center in Norfolk for 11 hours, the girls will have been left trying to explain it to their grandchildren.
And now, thanks to their parents' public disgrace, Beatrice, 37, and Eugenie, 35, have been marginalized even more than they ever imagined possible. Prince William has reportedly already warned the royals not to be photographed near them for the “rest of the year.”
The only royal left possibly worse off is Prince Harry, who, of course, understands exactly what it feels like to be persona non grata, and is rumored to have offered his cousins a listening ear and a safe haven in his Montecito home with his wife, Meghan, in California. This is the most intense family cool-down session imaginable, and it should blow your mind.
The sisters have their own, admittedly complicated, relationship with both their father and mother. They will have to make sense of any remaining loyalty to their disgraced parents as they disentangle themselves from the growing horror of the situation.
My heart goes out to them and yes, I have great sympathy for their plight. I never thought I'd say that, or care so much, but the fact that Beatrice and Eugenie, like me, have young children and are mothers makes the shame and rumors revolving around family dysfunction and wrongdoing that much worse.
How will they navigate the ins and outs of their family madness with Beatrice's four-year-old daughters, Sienna, and one-year-old Athena, as well as their nine-year-old stepson, Edoardo, and Eugenie's sons, August, five, and Ernest, two? How do you explain that you will no longer see parts of your family in public, unless it is under the cover of darkness? It's one thing to reconcile your own egos and vanity with no longer being a part of the real “show,” but how do you explain this new lifestyle of “staying out of the way” to your children?
As they live this public reality, I know how painful it can be to feel left out in an extended family. I walked away from mine after a dispute over my late father's will, and the toxic fallout had begun years earlier, when I was his sole caregiver. I also have to explain a softer version of this to my kids every Christmas and birthday, and the sadness I feel about it is overwhelming.
They will feel like they are dragging their own families into a drama that they did not create. Known for being polite and thoughtful, the York sisters have had to deal with the chaos their parents brought to them since they were little.
At first glance, it might all seem like pretty dresses and palace tea parties, but the girls have endured a life marked by divorce, salacious public headlines, and a father known for his arrogant behavior, along with a mother prone to complaints, their entire lives.
Even though Sarah called herself and Andrew the “happiest divorced couple in the world” after separating and divorcing in 1996, it was clearly never the whole picture. A childhood with a desperate and needy mother must have taken its toll on Beatrice and Eugenie. While Fergie would happily refer to herself and her daughters as “The Tripod”, this implies that her daughters were supporting her rather than being raised properly.
This could explain your own poor judgments. It has been reported that Beatrice helped advise her mother on how to regain sympathy for Epstein and that she also encouraged her father to participate in the catastrophic news night interview in 2019. The princesses are feared to have had indirect financial ties to Epstein. Anything seems possible with Sarah and Andrew at the helm.
You only have to look at the family photo of the Yorks at Beatrice's 18th birthday party at the Royal Lodge in Windsor in 2006 – which Jeffrey Epstein attended – to realize how surreal their world was. Sarah, Beatrice and Eugenie, dressed in period costumes that look like something from Frozenwith Andrew in a military suit, they looked more like characters from the set of Bridgerton than members of a modern royal family.
Not only have they long been a laughing stock, but they now have to face the reality of seeing their father kneeling on all fours over a woman lying on the floor and reading how their mother once told Epstein that she was waiting for Eugenie to return from a “weekend of sex.” It just adds to the dysfunction they have had to endure their entire lives.
Epstein's files revealed that his mother told the disgraced financier, “just marry me,” referred to him as the “brother I always wanted,” and asked him, “when are you going to hire me?” We now know that they were reportedly taken to lunch with Epstein in 2009 at his Palm Beach home, less than a week after he was released from prison for soliciting a child for prostitution. We also know that Andrew sent photos of Beatrice climbing Mount Blanc and Eugenie on a charity bike ride to Epstein in 2010 and 2011.
Of course, what the girls are going through is nothing compared to the trauma of Epstein's victims, who remember years of being used, abused and trafficked by some of the most powerful men in the world. But the shame of knowing that your father was flirting with a pedophile and that millions of people cut off their sex lives will surely cause deep shame and pain.
So where do they go from here?
At one point, Beatrice was rumored to be preparing to move Sarah into a modest granny annex at her Cotswolds home after she was reportedly forced to leave Royal Lodge. Luckily for Beatrice, that never materialized. Instead, Sarah now lives in the French Alps, thousands of miles from her daughters and grandchildren.
How can a child accept his parents' betrayal and shame by association? I hope that you both have access to strong emotional support and that, in time, you can build happy and stable lives, far from the current nightmare.
I truly believe that the best thing Beatriz and Eugenia could do is get away from real life, give up the public burden of their titles, and fully concentrate on raising their families in a calm and stable environment, something they were rarely allowed to do. They must dedicate their lives to meaningful work and ensure that there is never even a whisper of hypocrisy in the paths they choose.
The sisters have survived a childhood defined by chaos, scandal, and parental errors in judgment. Now, as mothers, they face the cruel irony of protecting their own families from a world their parents helped make so incredibly messed up. Stepping away from the glare of public life may not erase the past, but it will give them something more precious: the opportunity to raise their children in calm, stability and dignity and, finally, live a life that belongs only to them.
Good luck to them. They will need it.
