Under the long-lens lens of the British royal family and the magnifying glass of public opinion, Sarah Ferguson has been committed to maintaining a "perfect mother" persona for many years. She regarded her two daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, as her "soul mates" and used them as her last bulwark against outside gossip.
However, although she won the Mother of the Year Award in 2007, the 66-year-old duchess's private parenting performance seems to be very different from her public image of being responsible. The newly disclosed Epstein files reveal disturbing details: In 2009, just days after Jeffrey Epstein was released from prison after serving a sentence for grooming underage girls, Ferguson visited with his daughters. This extreme disregard for moral hazard has once again raised deep questions about its judgment.
Despite public claims to do his job, Ferguson was reportedly often absent
Royal biographer Andrew Lowney pointed out in his book "Privilege" that Ferguson often lacked the patience to discipline her daughter when she was young, and that this "motherhood" was largely performative. Loney revealed that the Duchess usually leaves her children in the care of a nanny unless a photographer is on hand for a PR shoot. It is reported that when the two little princesses and their mothers participated in "Hello! magazine and in exchange for a six-figure remuneration, the childcare staff would pick up the children as soon as the shutter stopped. The entire process was described by an insider as "a carefully planned performance from beginning to end."
When Princess Eugenie attended Marlborough College from 2003 to 2008, parents there were also confused by Ferguson's reputation as a "dedicated mother". One parent revealed to Loney that they could barely remember seeing the Duke or Duchess at the school gate. At the same time, according to psychic Mrs. Vasso, during their daughters' childhood, Ferguson took his young daughter on many luxury trips with his rumored lover, which meant taxpayers had to pay thousands of pounds for royal bodyguards.
In January 1992, a batch of vacation photos in Morocco taken in May 1990 were exposed. A total of 120 images recorded scenes of Ferguson and American playboy Steve Wyatt bathing in the sun together. Princess Eugenie was only a few weeks old at the time, while Princess Beatrice, just one, was pictured sitting on the businessman's lap. Given that Ferguson was still married to Prince Andrew at the time, the photos not only raised questions about the nature of her private life but also led to public disillusionment with her responsibilities as a mother.
What made the education community and parents even more angry was that in the summer of 1992, while traveling around the world with his "financial adviser" John Bryan, Ferguson forcibly took Princess Beatrice out of school during the semester. When the group took a private jet to vacation on the French Riviera, the turmoil turned into a huge scandal worthy of the "abdication crisis." Brian was filmed kissing and sucking on Ferguson's toes on a sunbed in Saint-Tropez, while the girls, aged four and two at the time, watched from a short distance away.
Faced with accusations of absenteeism, Ferguson once confessed to Mrs Vasseau that she saw no point in keeping young children in school for months on end. She insists that taking her daughters to travel whenever possible and broadening their horizons by experiencing new cultures is more important than boring classroom education. However, the price of this "broadening of horizons" is often the mother's absence at critical moments. In January 1996, she met Austrian player Thomas Muster in Qatar, and then her flight home was temporarily canceled and diverted to Sydney. As a result, her mother was unable to be with her two children when they returned to school after the Christmas vacation.
Despite all the rumors of his absence circulating behind the scenes, Ferguson never stopped praising his parenting abilities when facing the media. In 2011, she declared in an interview with Harper's Bazaar that she was "the best mother I know" and emphasized that being a good mother was the only thing she did 100% right in her life. In her autobiography, "Finding Sarah," she defined herself as a "global mother," describing motherhood as the greatest achievement of her life, and calling her two daughters a "tripod"—an interdependent, indestructible combination.
Andrew Loney analyzed that Ferguson's almost paranoid obsession with motherhood actually stems from her deep childhood trauma. When she was 13 years old, her mother, Susan, abandoned her family and children and fled to Argentina. This sense of abandonment formed the core of her personality. Royal writers pointed out that Ferguson has been seeking recognition throughout his life. His extravagant spending habits and violent mood swings are essentially attempts to fill his inner insecurities and inferiority complex. In 1998, his mother Susan died in a tragic car accident. This tragedy was called the darkest day of her life by the Daily Mail.
Now, as the Epstein scandal further unfolds, Ferguson's relationship with his daughters is facing an unprecedented test. Prince Andrew was arrested on suspicion of official crimes on his 66th birthday. This incident became the straw that broke the camel's back. Royal sources revealed that although Beatrice and Eugenie remained staunchly supportive of their mother in public, the truth revealed in the dossier has put the relationship between mother and daughter into "extreme tension."
The sisters were shocked and embarrassed by their parents' years-long close association with an "abomination" like Epstein. A source close to the princess revealed that they knew very little about these dark inside stories and felt ashamed when they read the emails their mother sent to Epstein. They love their parents deeply, but they are also clearly aware that it was the wrong choices of Andrew and Ferguson that involved them in Epstein's dirty circle, thereby "tarnishing" their image as members of the royal family.
