Sarah Ferguson Reportedly Clung to Psychic Prediction That Prince Charles Would Die and Andrew Would Become Regent
Sarah Ferguson had a bizarre conviction that her then-husband Prince Andrew would one day be the acting King of England. She got the idea thanks to a grim prediction from a psychic, according to her biographers.
Sarah Ferguson believed Prince Charles would die in an avalanche
The former Duchess of York’s reliance on psychic, astrologers, and other spiritual gurus was no secret. As her marriage to Andrew collapsed in the early 1990s and she became a tabloid fixture, Fergie turned to these individuals for support, per Allan Starkie’s 1996 bestseller Fergie: Her Secret Life.
“After one consultation, the Duchess was bursting with excitement because she believe Prince Charles was about to die,” Starkie wrote.
In 1998, the heir to the throne and Andrew’s elder brother had narrowly survived an avalanche while skiing in the Alps. The deadly incident claimed the life of the prince’s friend, Hugh Lindsay.
Fergie’s psychic claimed that Charles would die in a second avalanche. The Duchess then gleefully shared that news with Princess Diana, who was in the midst of her own marital breakdown.
In Ferguson’s mind, the tragic death of her brother-in-law would be followed by an instant elevation in Andrew’s status, as well as her own. While Prince William was next in line for the throne after Charles, he was too young to rule. If both Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles were to die before William came of age, Andrew – as the next adult male heir – would step in as Regent.
“Wherever this mad idea had come from, it was something Sarah was to cling to for months and years to come,” Starkie wrote. “She cherished an idea of Andrew being appointed Regent, reigning as de facto King until Prince William came of age, with her – separated but still married – by the Regent’s side.”
Such a development would also allow her to triumph over her rival Diana, according to Starkie.
“Indulging in this mental refuge, she saw the moment when she would finally outrank ‘The Blonde” (the Princess of Wales) and put her in her place,” he claimed. (Despite Starkie’s characterization, Ferguson has said that she and Diana had a good, though occasionally strained, relationship.)
Another even darker version of this fantasy allegedly grew out of Charles’ habit of traveling with both Prince William and Prince Harry by plane. If a crash resulted in all three dying, Andrew would move up to first in the line of succession.
Charles feared that Fergie and Diana were plotting against him
Of course, none of those events came to pass. Instead, the royal family’s next great tragedy involve Diana, who died in a Paris car accident in 1997. But while the psychics’ predictions never quite materialized, Ferguson remained a believer.
“Every time they were proved to be wrong, there was some spiritual explanation for it,” Starkie noted.
Meanwhile, Charles was apparently well aware that his sister-in-law wouldn’t have minded if he was out of the way.
“When Charles’s popularity hit rock bottom after the break-up of his marriage and his continuing association with Camilla Parker-Bowles, he began to suspect that brothers Andrew and Edward were plotting against him,” author Nigel Cawthorne wrote in Windsor Spares: The Prince Harry and Prince Andrew Soap Opera! (via Newsweek).
“After Diana said in an interview on Panorama that she did not think Charles would be king, he convinced himself that Diana and Fergie had plans to replace him as heir and announce that, in the event of the Queen’s death or abdication, Andrew would be regent until [Prince] William was 18,” Cawthorne claimed.
If any such plan did exist, it would have failed. The Queen lived until 2022, dying at age 96. That event finally allowed her eldest son to assume the throne at age 73. Andrew, meanwhile, has been embroiled in a series of scandals related to his association with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Before his mother’s death, she demoted from royal duties. Then, in 2025, Charles stripped him of his Duke of York title, making him Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. No word on whether a psychic predicted that.
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