Some very good and interesting points AristoCat.
The only point that I am having difficulty with is whether Sarah could have 'held out for more' in her divorce settlement. In English divorce settlements, the means of the parties have to be taken into account, but there is no requirement for one's mother-in-law to fund a settlement; which the queen generously did for Sarah [see the earllier post in this thread.] Legally therefore, I don't think that Sarah had a chance of getting a penny more than she did.
The situation (i.e. the generous award made to Sarah) is often obfuscuated by Sarah herself, for at times she has denied receiving any money at all [For example, the Fake Sheikh tape in which Sarah says she needs the money because she got nothing in her divorce settlement, although after a little prompting she in fact revises this figure upwards to £15,000, which in itself is still a few millions short of the true figure.]
The Queen gave Sarah a large capital lump sum which was hers to do with as she pleased; it would have been a canny use of a tiny part of the money she had been given to have used a couple of thousand pounds to upgrade her secretarial skills. Remember that after leaving school, she did a year's secretarial course at the exclusive Queen's Secretarial College in London, a place teeming with aristocratic young gels - the Queen Mother's niece Margaret Rhodes had received her secretarial training there a generation previously. Sarah studied shorthand, typing and general office skills; she came 'joint bottom' of the class in her studies, but still obtained her certificates.] Had Sarah retrained, she could have found reasonably well-paid work in a host of what, for a better word, I would say are 'upper crust' institutions: she could have worked in well-paid roles for the smarter property companies, for a stockbroker in the City, in one of the better paid Auctioneers etc. She could also have worked for a Charity, a socially impeccable job for someone in her position - the pay would not have been that good in a not-for-profit organisation, but it would have been perfectly adequate and indeed more than sufficient to supplement her divorce settlement. Indeed, she could have afforded to have worked part-time, leaving her an opportunity to concentrate on her other interests. And had she been a diligent employee, there would have been opportunities to progress - over the years I am sure many of us here have have seen people use their secretarial skills as a springboard to a better paid career; I myself have seeen many secretaries work their way up to 'Executive Assistants' and then become professionally qualified in their own fields: e.g. the bright secretary in Marketing who studies in her job to become a member of the Institute of Marketing, the bright secretarial assistant to a stockbroker who takes her Stock Exchange exams. The possibilities of advancement were all there for Sarah and she had the means in her divorce settlement to have taken the first steps in the direction of a fulfilling career.
But, as AristoCat says, Sarah chose not to go down this route and had too many enablers.
Just my thoughts, which are my own opinions and not meant to offend [and I am just about to go off racing now, hopefully for a bit of Royal Spotting if I am very lucky!]
Alex
