How Queen Elizabeth's Daughter Princess Anne Was Left So Livid She Wanted to Strangle Sarah Ferguson

Princess Anne was so enraged by a scandal engulfing the royal family in the early 1990s she came close to physically confronting her former sister-in-law, Sarah Ferguson, according to a new account that sheds light on the ferocity of feeling inside the House of Windsor.

OK! can reveal the episode unfolded in August 1992, at the height of the collapse of Ferguson's marriage to the now former Prince Andrew, 65, when photographs emerged showing the Duchess of York sunbathing in the south of France with her American financial adviser John Bryan.

The images, including shots of Bryan kissing and sucking Ferguson's toes, detonated a media storm and plunged the royal family into acute embarrassment.

At the time, Ferguson, now 66, had traveled to Balmoral to be with Andrew and other members of the family when the photographs hit the front pages. According to the royal author Andrew Lownie, the reaction around the breakfast table was explosive.

Writing in his book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, Lownie described how Ferguson came into the room to find her in-laws reading the coverage and immediately fled.

"She entered the breakfast room to find everyone reading the story and fled," Lownie wrote. "One person, who was present, told the duchess's biographer Chris Hutchins that the Princess Royal 'came close to throttling' Sarah, and at dinner told her what she thought of her: 'There was not one voice raised against Anne. [ex] Prince Andrew's anger melted into sadness, and he buried himself in the special reports compiled for the Queen, which she did not hesitate to let him read.'"

For Anne, known for her plain speaking and unsentimental approach to duty, the scandal represented a personal and institutional betrayal.

Sources familiar with the period say she saw the photographs as reckless behavior that compounded pressure on a monarchy already reeling from marital breakdowns and public scrutiny.

One said: "Anne had little tolerance for explanations or justifications. She felt Sarah's behavior had plunged the wider family into unnecessary turmoil and embarrassment, and she did not hesitate to make her anger and disapproval unmistakably clear to those around her."

A servant present at Balmoral during the episode offered a stark assessment of Ferguson's demeanor.

Sarah, the flunkie said, "acted in the strangest way," adding: "You would have thought she was the person wronged, as if she had every right to go on holiday with another man, kiss and cuddle him, and the only person who had behaved wrongly were the photographer and the editors of the newspapers who had published the pictures."

The scandal accelerated the disintegration of the Yorks' marriage.

Ferguson and Andrew formally separated later in 1992, though their divorce was not finalized until several years afterward.

Despite the rupture, the pair maintained an unusually close relationship, with Ferguson continuing to live alongside her former husband at Royal Lodge near Windsor Castle for many years.

That arrangement is now ending. Andrew has agreed to give up his lease on Royal Lodge and is expected to move to Norfolk, where he has been offered accommodation on the privately owned Sandringham estate of his brother, King Charles, 77.

Ferguson is not expected to join him, with reports suggesting she may relocate to Portugal, where her daughter Princess Eugenie, 35, owns property.

For royal watchers, the Balmoral confrontation remains emblematic of Anne's uncompromising loyalty to the institution.

One former courtier said: "Anne has always been very clear about the boundary between personal behavior and the responsibility that comes with public duty. When she believed that boundary had been breached, she was never inclined to soften her response or hold her tongue."