The Queen cannot change the style of a divorced wife of a Peer without consent from Parliament. In common law and precedent, former wives are entitled to retain their former titles by marriage as a courtesy style until they remarry.
She did issue Letters Patent in August 1996 clarifying that former wives of a Prince of the UK were not entitled to retain the rank and style of HRH upon divorce. Since Diana and Sarah were the first women to divorce sons of The Sovereign, the Letters Patent were designed to address this issue.
I agree with what you say, branchg. The Letters Patent dated 21st August 1986 did not
CHANGE anything: they merely
clarified the position as you so rightly point out.
There is ONE factor though that almost everyone seems to get wrong:
and that is the suggestion that Sarah retained the title 'Her Royal Highness' after her divorce UNTIL the above-mentioned Letters Patent. This suggestion - often repeated - is in fact
completely wrong.
How is came about though, is quite interesting and more than a little complicated:
Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson separated in March 1992. From before that point and thereafter the parties, through their separate solicitors negotiated a Separation Agreement. This is a matter of record, not 'secret' in any way. A Buckingham Palace spokesman issued later issued a statement confirming that the terms dealt with such things as the financial settlement and an agreement to divorce on the basis that the parties had lived apart for [at least] two years immediately prior to the presentation of the petition. This was thought to represent great negotiating skills on the part of Sarah's own solicitor, because it meant that Andrew would have been unable to petition for divorce on the basis of Sarah's adultery etc.
An interesting point is that in the years prior to the parties splitting in 1992, Sarah was becoming increasingly 'fed up' with Royal duties - for example, one year she had managed only 55 engagements, and even though she had been pregnant with Eugenie for some of that time, it still contrasted very unfavourably with the workload of the Queen Mother. In the time before the official split, Sarah was also seen to be moving away from what I will call
'royal circles' into the world of the 'international jet set', as she had started to forge friendships with such people as Steve Wyatt and John Bryan.
During the course of the divorce negotiations, Sarah suddenly began to raise the question of retaining some royal duties and being allowed to retain a royal title. This was very well documented at the time in the better newspapers such as The Times and The Guardian. In view of Sarah's previous reluctance to perform royal duties, it at first seemed somewhat odd that she should now wish to proceed down this tack; the view however was that perhaps John Bryan who, on his own well-publicised admission was at one stage acting as Sarah's financial adviser but also[allegedly] as an honest broker between Sarah and Andrew [a bit of an odd statement surely bearing in mind that the couple both had their own highly experienced, qualified and competent solicitors representing them] had his own 'ambitions' to use Sarah for the furtherance of his own interests and was therefore sharp enough to realise that her greatest asset was her connection to royalty, and therefore was the power behind Sarah's wish to keep some royal duties and her title. One also has to remember that during this period, negotiations were also continuing behind the scene regarding the separation and breakdown of Princess Diana; because of Diana's unique status as mother of the future King and the 'spare', there was also going to be need for her 'royal status' to be protected in some way. Sarah [or Bryan!?] would presumably have been trying to secure a similar concession for herself. Major sticking points regarding Diana's separation were a suitable title and formal recognition for her duties: in the event, Diana DID lose her HRH title, but -
unlike Sarah, it was always quite clearly stated that Diana WOULD remain a member of the Royal Family [note how even on her death, the royal standard covered her coffin] and she was allowed to remain at Kensington Palace and her financial settlement specifically included a sum large enough to maintain her 'office'. The better British newspapers reported that Sarah was apparently 'holding out' for similar arrangements...
Just before the Decree Nisi, a statement from a Buckingham Palace spokesman was made concerning the terms of the divorce: these terms had been embodied in a formal Separation Agreement that included a financial settlement AND that Sarah HAD agreed that she had following her DIVORCE she had NO RIGHT to be referred to as HRH. The Decree Nisi was pronounced on 17 April 1996 and the divorce Decree Absolute was pronounced on 30 May 1996. Diana's own divorce was made final on 28 August 1996.
Shortly after her own divorce became final, Sarah began hinting that 'she was still a Royal Highness. This led to an immediate rebuttal by Buckingham Palace, but it is believed this claim by Sarah, together with the fact that the Princess of Wales was to remain a member of the Royal Family, that led the queen to declare the position in the Letters Patent. But the LPs did not actually change anything: in fact, because of the way English titles 'work', it is always the case that on divorce, a former wife loses the right to style herself in accordance with the status of her husband: thus, on her divorce from (say) Mr John Smith, his wife Elizabeth can only style herself Mrs Elizabeth Smith; if Elizabeth had been married to a peer, e.g. The Marquess of Anycounty, during her marriage she would have been entitled to be known formally as ' The Most Honourable The Marchioness of Anycounty, but on her divorce she would immediately lose the style of 'The Most Honourable' and instead be known as Elizabeth, Marchioness of Anycounty. Thus, whatever had been included
or not in Sarah's Separation Agreement, she would
never have been entitled, by English Law, to continue to be 'Her Royal Highness'.
Just by way of a little extra information, in those days I was working full time and we all had a loose-leave folder of protocol, which included notes on precedence, forms of address etc. As soon as Sarah's divorce came through, we were issued with an appropriate sticker to place over the paragraph that dealt with Sarah, in order to reflect that, from her divorce onwards, she had lost the right to retain her status as an HRH.
Hope this helps,
Alex