Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson will take ownership of Queen Elizabeth II’s corgis, a source close to the royal said on Sunday.
Andrew and Ferguson, affectionately called Fergie, amicably divorced in 1996 but continued to live together at the Royal Lodge on the Windsor estate. The mansion is located just a few miles from Windsor Castle, one of the late monarch’s primary residences until her death last week. The former couple, along with their two daughters: Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, gifted the queen the two corgis early last year, at about the time of her husband Prince Philip’s death.
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A source close to Andrew told press outlets over the weekend that it was Fergie, who keeps her Duchess of York title unless she remarries, who found the dogs that they gave to the queen. The duchess bonded with the queen “even after her divorce” over dog-walking and horseback riding.
Elizabeth’s love of corgis began in 1933, when she was 7. Her father, then the Duke of York and later King George VI, bought the family a Pembroke Welsh corgi. The dog was the first of many for Elizabeth, who owned more than 30 corgis and dachshund-corgi mixes, known as “dorgis,” over the course of her life. Those puppies were all bred from Susan, a corgi she was gifted at 18. She created the “dorgi” hybrid breed with her sister, Princess Margaret.
She told Vanity Fair in a rare interview in 2015 that she had stopped breeding or taking on new corgis earlier in the decade, arguing she did not want any of her dogs to outlive her. The last of her purebred corgis, Willow, died in 2018.
The queen is believed to have also left behind an older “dorgi” named Candy and a cocker spaniel named Lissy. It is unclear if Andrew and Fergie will take responsibility for them as well.
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The Duke of York has a diminished profile in the British royal family after withdrawing from public life in 2019, when his mother effectively fired him over his disastrous response to questions about his close ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He privately remained the queen’s favorite son despite being disgraced, including after she stripped him of his military titles and charities earlier this year.
That decision came after a New York judge allowed a lawsuit against Andrew from an Epstein accuser who alleged that the royal raped her when she was underage on three occasions. He settled the suit the next month, preventing a trial, but continues to deny the accusations.
