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The royal family at first tried to patch things up but by last week was in high dudgeon. "The knives are out for Fergie at the palace," said Paul Reynolds, BBC Radio's court correspondent. "I have never known such anger here." Reason: suspicions that the duchess had engineered a leak of the separation story. Fergie's friends denied it, but the upstart had already angered the Queen by hiring her own lawyers. "Unheard-of impertinence," huffed a senior palace official.
The Queen was said at first to be "very, very sad" about the separation, then "very, very angry." Once again the Daily Mail had the scoop, confirming that Fergie had been quietly pressing for a split since November. The paper also reported that two weeks ago the Queen received her daughter-in-law at a "private lunch" in a last-ditch effort to avert a breakup. "A private lunch with the Queen is supposed to remain private, not pitch up in the papers," fumed a palace official. The condemnation of Fergie as unsuitable was a social death sentence.
The volley of stories detailing the palace's behind-the-scenes fury ended up backfiring. The public sympathized with the 32-year-old mother of two who had strayed into the sights of such heavy artillery. The next day Charles Anson, the Queen's press secretary and the source of some of the vitriol, issued an extraordinary, perhaps unprecedented, public apology to the monarch and Fergie. Anson was not the only insider to spill venom, but he accepted "full responsibility" for what some people had begun to call the "Mean Queen Machine." The next step in damage control was to negotiate a deal with the departing duchess: a possible $4 million-plus settlement, along with retention of a noble "courtesy title," in exchange for her keeping mum about life at court.
Fergie's official duties were suspended, but the royal family did its level best to give the impression of business as usual. The Queen turned up for a scheduled visit to the University of Surrey, where she chatted and joked. And Andrew? According to a palace source, the duke "is calming down, but he is bitter." Fulfilling one of his official engagements, the man once dubbed Randy Andy alighted from his Jaguar at the Contemporary Dance Trust headquarters in Central London with a broad smile and a wave at the crowd of bystanders. It was in stark contrast to the glum visage the Royal Navy lieutenant commander and helicopter pilot displayed a day earlier as he drove between Sunninghill Park, his and Fergie's controversial modern mansion near Windsor Palace, and the Army Staff College at Camberley, 25 miles southwest of London.
The duchess is expected to retain custody of Princess Beatrice, 3, and Princess Eugenie, who turns two this week. Andrew is to have unlimited visitation rights. Which partner would end up with the greater share of public sympathy remained unclear. Often regarded as a hero for his service in the 1982 Falklands war, the duke proved to be less than heroic to his wife. Frequently away on military duty, at home he began turning Fergie into a golf widow as he pursued his passion for the sport. Said Anne Fernley, a London housewife: "It's a pity, really. They're a nice couple with nice children." Dudley Hicks, a shoe-shop manager in the capital, disapproved. "They have a position to uphold," he said. "They should have stayed together for the children too."