Today marks 27 years since Susan Barrantes, the mother of Sarah Ferguson, died in a car crash in Argentina. Barrantes was 61. The accident stunned the royal circle and came a little over a year after the death of Princess Diana. Reports at the time indicated she was driving at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour when she collided with a truck; the lorry driver, who was wearing a seatbelt, escaped with a broken ankle while Barrantes did not survive.
Barrantes spent the final two decades of her life in Argentina after leaving Sarah’s father, Ronald Ferguson, to be with Argentine polo manager Héctor Barrantes. The move to South America underscored the broader drama surrounding the duchess’s family and prompted long standing public fascination with the private life behind the headlines. Andrew Lownie’s biography of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson details an alleged affair between Barrantes and Prince Philip, a claim that has circulated in royal biographies and tabloid coverage for years. Lownie presents the matter as part of a wider pattern of complicated relations within the family and social circle rather than as a discrete, isolated scandal.
Susan Barrantes’s marriage to Ronald Ferguson in 1956 produced Sarah in 1959, but the union was far from stable. Lownie writes that Susan grew exasperated by her husband’s alleged philandering, which she believed began in the early 1960s and allegedly involved one of her bridesmaids. The tension within the marriage contributed to a separation in 1972, an event Lownie describes as the end of Sarah’s childhood. The breakup left Sarah with a lasting sense of insecurity and an ongoing effort to please others, amid weight concerns she later attributed to the emotional stress of her family situation. Susan’s departure to London and then Argentina was framed by her desire not to disrupt her children’s education, but it also created a fissure between mother and daughter that would echo through the years.
The two women did reconnect for a period in 1976, when Sarah, having just completed her O levels, traveled to Argentina to spend time with her mother. That summer, Susan and her partner attended the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of York, an event that brought together two generations of the royal circle. Lownie notes the paradox of the moment: the father of the groom and the mother of the bride, lovers two decades earlier, sat together in a carriage waving to the crowds. The public reunion was followed by years of complex dynamics within the family as both women navigated their lives in different continents and social spheres.
In the years that followed, both Fergie and Susan found themselves drawn into controversy over finances and publicity. A £250,000 sum intended for charity became entangled in arrangements meant to help Susan’s finances and to renovate the couple’s home. The payment, arranged with Hello!, funded a 48 page spread that included numerous photographs, including one of a young Princess Beatrice; the transaction became a flashpoint in debates about royal finances and media leverage. Lownie portrays this episode less as a single misstep and more as part of a broader pattern of financial strain that would echo in the family for years. A separate episode in the mid-1990s involved a widely publicized holiday in which Fergie was photographed with a close associate in a sunbed scene in St Tropez. Susan Barrantes later claimed that Buckingham Palace had leaked the details to the press, a claim that has fed longstanding discussions about the degree of access royal aides and media had to the duchess’s private life.
Financial pressures continued to shadow Barrantes, especially after the death of Héctor Barrantes. Lownie describes a cascade of unpaid bills and utility shutoffs that rose in the wake of Héctor’s death, with a tradition of family debt described as a recurring issue. In response, Sarah Ferguson used part of her divorce settlement from Prince Andrew to help pay off her mother’s debts. The story, as recounted in Lownie’s book, depicts a family caught in repeated cycles of financial strain and public scrutiny, rather than a straightforward tale of glamour and privilege.
Susan Barrantes died six years after Sarah’s separation from Andrew. The Duchess’s grief was compounded by the broader strains described in Lonie’s account, including the so-called family disease of debt and the emotional toll of navigating a life that straddled two cultures and two vastly different public spheres. The Daily Mail described Barrantes’s death as a dark day for Fergie, a moment that reverberated in Argentina and Britain alike. After Barrantes’s passing, Sarah traveled to Argentina and faced a mounting pile of bills, with essential services reportedly turned off as she confronted a legacy of debt left by the family’s financial arrangements.
The years since have included sustained reflection by Sarah Ferguson on her mother’s life and choices. In later interviews, she indicated that she thinks about Barrantes every day. The duchess has refrained from dwelling on private pain in public, but experts emphasize that the complicated bond between mother and daughter helped shape Ferguson’s approach to motherhood, public life, and her own resilience in the face of tabloid scrutiny. Lownie’s biography of Andrew and Fergie provides a fuller portrait of how Susan Barrantes’s choices and the associated family dynamics influenced Ferguson’s public image and personal narrative, illustrating how a royal marriage is inseparable from the lives of those who live beyond the palace gates.
The portrait that emerges is not a simple tale of scandal or tragedy, but a layered history of loyalties, separations, and reconciliation across continents and decades. It underscores how personal choices can ripple through generations, influencing how a royal family is perceived by the public and how the individuals at its center frame their own identities under the relentless glare of media attention. The new details from Lownie’s work add texture to a story that has long fascinated readers, offering a more nuanced understanding of the bond between Sarah Ferguson and her mother and the wider currents of royal life that continue to shape the modern monarchy in ways that resonate beyond the palace walls.