Sarah Ferguson Reveals Queen Elizabeth’s Heartfelt Final Words to Her
Get ready for waterworks because Queen Elizabeth II’s final words to her former daughter-in-law, Sarah Ferguson, were incredibly touching. In fact, the words still make the Duchess of York cry. Ahead, the queen’s final words to Ferguson and their connection to the queen getting “annoyed” with Ferguson.
‘Yourself is good enough’ were the queen’s final words to Sarah Ferguson
Speaking to the U.K.’s The Times in a December 2024 interview alongside her sister, Jane, Attenborough, Ferguson gushed about her and the queen’s relationship. “Queen Elizabeth and I got on so well,” she said. “She knew me all my life and she loved me.”
Ferguson married the queen’s son, Prince Andrew, 64, in 1986. The two divorced 10 years later in May 1996. In the decades since, the Duke and Duchess of York have remained close, living together at the Royal Lodge in Windsor, England.
Ferguson continued, noting the queen “never lost” her before sharing the meaningful final words the monarch had told her. “The best advice she gave me was the last thing she said to me: ‘Sarah, remember that yourself is good enough.’”
“It makes me cry,” Ferguson said of Queen Elizabeth’s simple but powerful words. She went on to say how she knew the queen as a child because her mother was a “close friend.”
“She knew me all my life and she loved me,” Ferguson said. “The Queen was much more my mother than my mother was. […]She never let me down, even if I let her down. Even through the darkest days, she never left me.”
Sarah Ferguson ‘annoyed’ Queen Elizabeth by not being herself
Previously, on an episode of her “Tea Talks With the Duchess and Sarah” podcast, Ferguson talked about the queen seeing her as evidenced by those final words.
“It’s the last thing that the Queen said to me: ‘Just be yourself, Sarah,’” Ferguson recalled on the podcast, noting Queen Elizabeth immediately picked up on it when she wasn’t being herself. “And she saw it. She just got so annoyed when I wasn’t being myself.”
“And that’s probably when I got into all the pickles,” she added. “But now I am myself, and I’m just so lucky to be able to be myself.”
Sarah Ferguson always felt ‘nervous’ about spending time with the queen
Although Ferguson knew Queen Elizabeth for many years and even “called her Mumma,” the Duchess of York never felt completely relaxed around the late monarch. “I still got nervous seeing her right up until the end because she was the Queen of England,” Ferguson explained.
So, despite “walk[ing] the dogs with her”—the 65-year-old now looks after the queen’s “phenomenal” corgis—there were still lingering nerves.
After the queen’s death on Sept. 8, 2022, at the age of 96, Ferguson joined Andrew, and their daughters, Princess Beatrice, 36, and Princess Eugenie, 34, as well as many other royals, for the queen’s Westminster Abbey funeral and St. George’s Chapel committal service at Windsor Castle.
