Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are reportedly alarmed by claims that Sarah Ferguson is in discussions to sell the rights to a tell-all memoir for $2 million, with insiders warning the prospective book could expose embarrassing private secrets and derail the Sussexes’ fragile push for a royal reconciliation.
The news came at a particularly delicate moment. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex had been widely reported as edging towards their first return visit to the United Kingdom in some time, a trip understood to mark the opening move in what promises to be a long and careful effort to rebuild their standing with the Royal Family. Harry, 41, still faces uncertainty over his UK security arrangements, and his reported rift with Prince William shows precious little sign of softening.
Ferguson, 66, has endured a punishing stretch of late. According to reports, she was stripped of her Duchess title last year and subsequently asked to vacate Royal Lodge, her sprawling 30-bedroom mansion. Sources say she has been confiding in friends that she ‘needs money,’ and a memoir worth $2 million would, if it materialises, represent a considerable lifeline.
Reports from last week indicated that Ferguson had been staying in the United States with her close friend Priscilla Presley and that, during the trip, she held meetings with publishers in a bid to sell the rights to an as-yet-unwritten book.
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Even so, the prospect alone appears to have rattled the Sussexes. ‘Sarah was around for so many of the private conversations during the worst of the royal fallout,’ according to an insider. ‘There are things she could spill that would be very damaging. And even if she doesn’t share anything damaging per se, it’s still a PR disaster.’
Ferguson has always occupied a peculiar position within the extended Royal Family, close enough to have been trusted with genuine intimacies, yet sufficiently removed from the formal institution to carry relatively few constraints on what she might one day choose to share. One royal reporter put it without ceremony. ‘She knows where the bodies are buried, so to speak, she knows where the skeletons are in the closet and she can absolutely expose them if she wants to.’
There is also the commercial machinery to consider, and that dimension may prove just as consequential. An insider noted that once a book of this type gains momentum, an author’s original intentions rarely survive the editorial process untouched. ‘Once Sarah signs on for this, she’s going to be under enormous pressure from publishers to really deliver the goods,’ the source said. ‘A simple memoir about her life isn’t going to cut it, she’s going to have to lift the lid on royal drama if she wants the big payout.’ Ferguson, the source added, has ‘always been someone that loves to gossip’ and has ‘traded on royal titbits socially for years’ — a reputation that is unlikely to escape the attention of any publisher offering that kind of advance.
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Talk TV presenter Kevin O’Sullivan was characteristically direct on the matter. ‘The word is Meghan confided all her secrets to Fergie so those secrets, trust me, are coming soon to a book near you.’
The basis for that claim reaches back to the very beginning of the Sussex story. Because Princess Eugenie was reportedly present when Harry and Meghan first met, Ferguson is said to have had a ‘front row’ seat to their relationship from its earliest days. ‘She’s always been very sympathetic to them so a lot was shared with her, unlike other members of the family,’ an insider said. ‘When Megxit happened, she was right there in the mix.’
Ferguson’s public stance on Meghan has not always been consistent, it should be noted. In 2019, she praised her as ‘modern and fabulous,’ said she could ‘relate to her,’ and expressed that she felt ‘desperately sorry’ about the treatment Meghan was receiving. By 2023, the warmth appeared to have cooled, with Ferguson insisting to one interviewer that ‘I don’t really know Meghan, I haven’t really met her.’ Whether that represented genuine distance or a measure of diplomatic caution is, at best, unclear from the outside.
What the Sussexes appear most troubled by, sources say, is less the content of any prospective memoir and more the perception it would generate. ‘There’s a real fear people will assume they secretly encouraged Sarah to say these things, which would completely destroy any chance of repairing relationships with William and the rest of the family,’ an insider said. And in what sources describe as a rare moment of alignment, neither Harry and Meghan nor the Prince of Wales are said to want this book to see the light of day. ‘No one wants her to write this.’
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.ibtimes.co.uk ’
