Sarah Ferguson reveals the emotional promise she made to Princess Diana before her death

Sarah Ferguson's touching promise to Princess Diana before she died has highlighted just how close the two royal icons were during their friendship. 

• Sarah Ferguson has shared the emotional promise she made to Princess Diana before her death in 1997 in a recent interview. 
• Fergie and Diana had a famously close friendship, having known each other long before marrying into the Royal Family. 
• In other royal news, Meghan Markle's new Netflix project takes her number of side hustles to six.
  

Sarah Ferguson has opened up about her special relationship with Princess Diana, revealing the emotional promise they exchanged before her tragic death in 1997. 

The ex-wife of Prince Andrew was famously tight with the late royal, who also just happened to be her fourth cousin. Their friendship, and alleged subsequent fallout, was widely covered by the British tabloids, who would regularly publish stories about the duo’s shenanigans within the walls of Buckingham Palace. 

Despite hailing from the same noble ancestry, Diana and Fergie didn’t meet until their teens. According to Fergie, the aristocratic pair were first introduced at the age of 15 or 16, when they sparked an almost immediate connection. They quickly became staples in other's lives, catching up every week for lunch and gatecrashing high-end parties. 

The two women reportedly hit a bump in their friendship when Fergie was denied an invitation to the reception of Diana's wedding to Prince Charles in 1981. The so-called snub prompted the media to stir rumors of a rift between the pair, with many reports claiming that Fergie was angry and embarrassed over the rejection. The drama wasn’t enough to tear the duo apart, though. They remained close throughout Diana's early years at the palace, with Fergie helping her friend to navigate the challenges of royal life. 

In the wake of Princess Diana's statue unveiling to mark her 60th birthday, the Duchess of York has shared some touching reflections about her bond with the late royal. 

”We promised each other we would always be together—there was never any daylight between us,” she told People magazine. “But everybody wanted that, because we were so strong together. People want to break something so strong.”

The Duchess also reminisced about her happy memories of the Princess of Wales, crediting her for helping her to fulfill her public duties. Fergie married the Duke of York, Prince Charles’s younger brother, five years after Diana joined the Royal Family. Like Diana, the Duchess went through a high-profile divorce after her relationship with Prince Andrew collapsed. 

“She taught me so much of public life,” she added. “She was so brave. We used to have the most incredible time together.” The two women, who were both stuck in unhappy marriages, reportedly even plotted to leave their husbands at the same time. Although it ultimately fell through, Princess Diana's divorce pact with Sarah Ferguson revealed just how tight-knit the pair were at the time.

Sadly, the two women were not on good terms when Diana died in 1997. Fergie was in the process of trying to reconcile with her old friend when she received the devastating news that she had been killed in a car crash in Paris. To add more pain to an already heartbreaking story, Diana had apparently been intending to reach out to Fergie, too. 

“The saddest thing, at the end, we hadn't spoken for a year,” the Duchess told Harper’s Bazaar in 2007. 

“I tried, wrote letters, thinking whatever happened didn’t matter, ‘let's sort it out.’ And I knew she’d come back. In fact, the day before she died she rang a friend of mine and said, ‘Where’s that Red? I want to talk to her.'"

Despite the rocky end to their friendship, Fergie has always kept the legacy of her beloved friend alive. “I really miss Diana. I loved her so much,” she said. “Diana was one of the quickest wits I knew; nobody made me laugh like her.”