Britain The Not So Merry Wife of Windsor

By JAMES WALSH

fergie (fr ft.ge) chiefly British: a rambunctious misfit and renegade; a royal black sheep ((late 20th cent., origin obscure))

When they married, they seemed a match made in tabloid heaven: Andrew, the handsome playboy prince, and Sarah Ferguson, the red-headed minx who enjoyed slap and tickle and a good time. In contrast to the icy blondness of her sister-in-law Diana, the fun lover all of Britain came to know as Fergie was made up of earth colors and earthy views, promising a shot of red blood into thin royal veins. "She is the best thing in my life," Andrew often told friends, while his bride openly gushed, "I love his wit, his charm, his looks. I worship him."

That was before the children came. Before the royal duties and stately protocols began weighing as heavily as maternal pounds around the hips. Before the couple's enforced separations, then separations by choice: Fergie's impulsive flyaways to Alpine ski slopes and Mediterranean beaches, parties with dubious friends and displays of desperate merriment. Before Andrew began to slam her pals as "poncey philistines," and she to knock his sometimes boorish behavior as "terribly gauche."

Then last week, on the sixth anniversary of their engagement, Buckingham Palace made it coldly official: the Duke and Duchess of York's marriage was for practical purposes over. They had agreed to separate formally, with the option of divorce after two years. According to scornful palace officials, the woman increasingly mocked by the press as Freebie Fergie and Duchess Do-Little was "unsuitable for public life, for royal life."

The storm of headlines stole the thunder from the campaign for Britain's April 9 general election. That the split also upstaged news about the nation's deepest slump since World War II demonstrated one value of the House of Windsor today: as a distraction. At a time of anguish over Britain's national direction, a Hollywood-style cult of celebrity surrounding Queen Elizabeth II's offspring has endowed the royal clan with a more modern relevancy. The Queen's second son and his wayward wife provided everything in the way of gossip-page dramatics that their 1986 wedding seemed to herald. But in the end, the couple proved to be unsuitable for each other.

Though Britons relished Fergie's outgoing nature, they nonetheless expect members of the royal family to behave with dignity. The new duchess could never manage that for long. When the tabloids were not feasting on rumors of marital stresses between Diana and Prince Charles, heir to the throne, they were sniping at Andrew's spouse for her idleness, her "materialism" and, well, her behavior that was Not Quite His Class, Dear -- reproofs that were said to reflect Buckingham Palace's views. Britons high and low agreed: their revered sovereign and her family deserved better.

Eventually, the buzz saw wore down the polo manager's daughter. She was particularly upset when the Daily Mail in January splashed a scoop of her poolside unwinding in Morocco with Steve Wyatt, 38, bachelor son of a Texas oil tycoon. A cleaning woman had found snapshots of the scene in Wyatt's old flat in London and tattled the tale. Though Scotland Yard impounded the photos -- by all accounts they depicted only innocent fun -- Andrew reportedly hit the roof.

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."

At a time when 1 out of every 3 British marriages ends in divorce, however, the Yorks are hardly an unusual case. "I think the appeal of the monarchy is precisely that these are ordinary people with ordinary problems," said Lord St. John of Fawsley, a British constitutional expert. He pointed to "the prevailing climate of moral opinion" that accepts divorce. The royal family, if anything, has had more than its share of split-ups: Princess Margaret, the Queen's sister, ended her marriage with Lord Snowdon 14 years ago, and Andrew's sister Princess Anne is separated from her husband. Charles and Diana, frequently apart, struggle with widely rumored private strains. The Queen's marriage to Prince Philip is the only one that remains resolutely correct.

During the 1936 constitutional crisis over the engagement of King Edward VIII -- later the Duke of Windsor -- and American divorce Wallis Warfield, Winston Churchill growled, "Why shouldn't the King be allowed to marry his cutie?" Playwright Noel Coward shot back, "Because England doesn't wish for a Queen Cutie." Today many Britons want a taste of soap opera in their royalty. Sarah Ferguson, Duchess Cutie, proved very suitable -- if only temporarily -- for that.

With reporting by William Mader/London