Sarah Ferguson Recalls Constant Pressures of Living in the Public Eye With Late Sister-in-Law Princess Diana

In a candid new letter published by the UK’s Hello! magazine on Monday, February 11, Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York opened up about her past relationship with late sister-in-law Princess Diana and explained how hard it was for them to live in the public eye because people would constantly make it seem like they didn’t get along.

“People tried to portray Diana and me all the time as rivals, which is something neither of us ever really felt,” Fergie, 59, revealed. “It’s not acceptable to pit women against one another all the time. It’s not acceptable to troll other people viciously online.”

Sarah’s letter supported the magazine’s new #HelloToKindness campaign that aims to eradicate cyberbullying. In her essay, the mom to Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie noted that it’s not nice to post “abusive” comments about anyone online because you never know what they’re going through.

“Take a look at any website, and you’ll see extraordinarily abusive comments aimed not only at people in the public eye but also other internet users,” she wrote. “Bullying, sniping, bitching, even the most appalling sexism, racism and homophobia are commonplace — it seems that online, anything goes.”

“I know that a lot say nice things, but there’s a large minority who seem to think that all the normal rules of society don’t apply to the internet,” she continued. “I rarely if ever go ‘below the line’ on social media or news websites and read people’s comments.”

Emily Nash, a royals reporter at Hello!, said it was important to launch the campaign with Sarah’s help because of all of the negative backlash that royal sisters-in-law Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton have been receiving lately.

“It seems to me to be particularly sexist,” she previously told CNN about the comments she reads online about the duchesses. “You have people comparing them in a way that doesn’t really happen with men — ‘she’s walking funny, or her heels are too high, or her legs are too skinny.’“ Hopefully, Fergie’s powerful letter will remind fans that the royals are people, too!

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