It was going to be a year of celebrations. Isabel II had become queen forty years earlier, so 1992 marked celebrations for a jubilee of resonant ones for the British Crown. His reign, which would become the longest in United Kingdom Until his death in 2022, he was in good health when measured in terms of popularity.
The level of detail with which the Queen learned about the day-to-day life of the territory in which she was monarch, her pragmatism and determination when it came to executing decisions and the serenity that she had managed to maintain in her environment during the first decades of her reign – although it was, at least, appearances – were the bricks with which he built the sympathy that public opinion had for him.
But 1992 broke with that stable tradition. The year was filled with scandals starring three of the four children of Isabel II, all with the same ending: the divorce. The covers of the British and world media talked about the British Crown more than ever before, deepening the sensationalism with which they had begun to look at the Windsor in the 80’s.
The debacle was such that, on November 24 of that year, in the speech in which her four decades on the throne were commemorated, the Queen defined the current year as a “terrible year”a Latin expression equivalent to “horrible year” or “terrible year.” The impact was immediate and international: the next day, Elizabeth II’s definition was on the front pages of the newspapers, and the most sensational British media even dared to headline “Year of Shit.”
Elizabeth II herself told during her speech how she had arrived at that expression to define a year that she hoped to leave behind as soon as possible and about which she assured that “she would never look back with pleasure when she looked back.” One of his closest collaborators, Sir Edward Ford, who had been his private secretary, had sent him a letter expressing his sympathy for the tumultuous year. He referred to 1992 as “annus horribilis” and the Queen immediately adopted the expression.
The (rotten) icing on the cake (too bitter) had occurred just four days before that speech, on November 20, 1992, exactly 32 years ago. A short circuit in the maintenance works of a private chapel in the Windsor Castle triggered a fire fierce in the bastion of the Crown. The fire spread quickly due to the large presence of wood in many of the rooms in the northeast wing of the building, and reached the famous St. George’s Room, recognized for the presence of great works of art. Some were lost forever, others, such as paintings by Rembrandt or Rubens, could be saved from the flames.
The physical center of power that the Windsors had built over the course of their reigns was set on fire in the middle of a completely shocking year for the royal family: it seemed like a metaphor but it was pure reality. Elizabeth II had no doubts: that was the most difficult year of his reignwhich is why he gave the historic speech that caused the Encyclopedia Britannica to incorporate a reference for “annus horribilis.”
The first official announcement was on March 19 of that year that it would only get worse. He prince andrewthird child of the marriage built by Isabel II and Philip of Edinburgh, He would separate from his wife, the Duchess of York, whom he had married in 1986.
The Duchess, Sarah Fergusonhad conquered Andrés with pure audacity and self-confidence, characteristics with which he had also seduced – only in the first instance – the royal family. But that same self-confidence would be what, just a few years later, would exhaust the Crown and appear on the front pages of the newspapers. “Marrying Sarah has been the best decision of my life,” Andrés said in 1991. It was barely a year before the divorce was announced. The scandal between the two was just beginning.
The princess Annasecond daughter of the royal marriage, also separated that year, just a few months after her brother announced the dissolution of their couple. She had married Captain Mark Phillips in 1973 and they had two children, and at the time of the official announcement they had actually been separated for at least two years.
The couple had committed infidelities on one side and the other, but the public scandal was when the letters that the frigate captain Timothy Laurencewho had been in the Queen’s service, had sent the princess to her around 1989. It was a scandal and it was also a story of true love: Anna and Timothy are together to this day. But none of that could be foreseen in the sensational tabloids that were already reporting the second royal divorce in just a few months.
It was never reliably known, but the estimate was that the Daily Mirror, one of the most tabloid British media, had paid £8 million for the photo. Taken by a paparazzi on the Côte d’Azur, it was seen Sarah FergusonAndrés’s now ex-wife, along with John Bryan, his financial advisor.
The circumstances of the photo triggered the indignation and morbidity of society: she was in full practice of topless, he kissed her feet. It was August 1992 and, at the beginning of that year and before the separation of Ferguson and Andrés was made official, photos of her with an American oil magnate had already circulated.
“Vulgar, vulgar, vulgar,” was the comment that the Royal House spread after the photo of Sarah with Bryan, in complete privacy, saw the light. The most tabloid newspapers claimed on their covers, in catastrophe-sized headlines: “Fergie was stolen.” The scandal in the United Kingdom was total, and it was barely half of the “annus horribilis”.
Prince Charles – who is now the king Carlos III– y Diana They were already separated in fact. Rumors of a marital crisis between the heir to the throne and the Princess of Wales had already spread in British society, but June 16, 1992 was a break with no turning back. That day the authorized biography arrived in bookstores. Diana, her true storywritten by the author Andrew Morton and with the testimony of the princess and her closest environment.
The infidelities on the part of Charles, the mistreatment and mistreatment by the royal family -including Isabel II-, the depression and even the self-harm that this had caused Diana is part of the book that was a global bestseller and that delved into the daily life of the Crown through Lady Di, perhaps the most charismatic character in that entire world.
A few months after the book’s publication, always during 1992, a conversation between Diana and a childhood friend, James Gilbey, was revealed. In those conversations, Lady Di criticized the Windsors in general and the Queen in particular: “He doesn’t look at me with hatred, it’s a kind of mixed pity and interest. Every time I look up I see him looking at me,” Diana said. The Sun transcribed the conversation between the princess and her friend, and the British measured the level of depression that Diana suffered from.
At the same time, rumors about the extramarital relationship between the then prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles They didn’t stop growing. It was not new, but the intensity of those rumors combined with the biography and the conversation between Diana and her childhood friend made the whole scenario scandalous. As in the case of his sister Anna, some years after the story began as lovers, Charles would end up marrying Camilla, current queen consort.
On November 20, 1992, the entire United Kingdom looked towards the Windsor Castle. There where the Royal Family had forged its monarchical lineage, the flames burned. The shock was total and that was the coup de grace for the Queen to consider that that year had been one of the worst she had ever had to live at the head of her kingdom.
But in addition to the shock, the Queen and the Crown had to face massive criticism about the financing of the monarchy. “The bill will come to us, that is, to the taxpayer,” the spokesperson for the Heritage area of the English government said at a press conference. The enormous castle, so valuable, was not insured. And it was the State – the civilians – who financed its maintenance. The sum between what had to be recomposed and what had been lost in the fire was incalculable, but Heritage said “tens of millions of pounds.”
That enormous economic cost on the shoulders of citizens on foot was an immediate source of widespread unrest towards the Crown. And that discomfort was added to the one that had already built the pile of scandals that the British royalty had been dragging throughout 1992.
Elizabeth II had quick reflexes. She announced that both she and Prince Charles they would start paying taxessomething that did not happen before: 40% of its income would go to fundraising. At the same time, to finance the reconstruction of Windsor without all that cost falling on taxpayers – or at least, so that it did not fall directly -, the Queen arranged for Buckingham Palace to open its doors several times a year to receive public. What was raised on each of those days was destined to the recovery of the palace.
That recovery was educational and, for Elizabeth II, it was also about recovering the Windsors. To ensure that society could look with perspective – that’s what he also talked about in his speech – all those scandals that had surrounded his family in just a few months. There was no longer anything that could repair the misfortunes that had made 1992 that “annus horribilis”. So the Queen bet on the future, to once again improve her image and that of the Crown. For the Windsor fire to go out and time to blur the details of that year in which everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
