Queen Elizabeth's Last Words to Sarah Ferguson Are Heartbreaking

Sarah Ferguson credits an unexpected senior royal for making her transition into the royal fold a little easier–and helping her get through her "darkest times." In an interview with the Sunday Times published on December 14, the Duchess of York looked back on her pre-royal life and how she struck up a close friendship with Queen Elizabeth. Revealing that the late monarch became like a “mother” figure to her in the absence of her own, Ferguson opened up about the heartbreaking final words the queen shared with her–and how it’s still stuck to her to this day.

While Ferguson didn’t marry Prince Andrew until she was 26, the royal was close to the Windsors from a young age. In her interview, Ferguson explained how Queen Elizabeth supported her after her mom left her in the U.K. to start a new life in Argentina with her second husband, Héctor Barrantes Sansoni.

“My mum was her close friend so she knew me all my life and she loved me. The Queen was much more my mother than my mother was,” she shared. “I called her Mumma. She never let me down, even if I let her down. Even through the darkest days, she never left me.”

The Duchess of York also shed more light on her “darkest days,” crediting the queen for helping her deal with poor self-esteem amid postnatal depression and body-shaming comments from the public.

“I was an addict to food. The fact I could eat my emotions was the only thing that saved my life,” she shared. “I got lost, probably trying to be like Diana.”

A cruel nickname from the public–“the Duchess of Pork”–severely impacted the royal's self-worth, as she told the publication, “I believed my critics.”

“But the Queen never lost me,” she continued. “The best advice she gave me was the last thing she said to me: ‘Sarah, remember that yourself is good enough.’ It makes me cry.”

Ferguson revealed she kept her close relationship with the queen until the end of her life, although she admitted, “I still got nervous seeing her right up until the end because she was the queen of England.”

However, the royal said that she still has a sweet way to remember her relationship with Elizabeth, which included corgi dog walks during the pandemic. “I had many Covid jabs so I could walk the dogs with her. She had little brown walking shoes. Now I have the corgis. They’re phenomenal,” she shared.

Read the original article on InStyle