The Royals Come Calling : ...

Palace officials were nervous.

The engagement of Queen Elizabeth II’s second son, Prince Andrew, was official and the full, nerve-racking glare of publicity was about to descend over his bride-to-be.

As a warm-up question in her first television interview, a British Broadcasting Corp. reporter asked what she had had for breakfast.

“Sausages and a migraine,” came the instant reply.

The ice was broken and Sarah Ferguson has never looked back.

The prince and his bride, made the Duke and Duchess of York by the queen on the day of their wedding in July, 1986, land in Los Angeles on Friday for a 10-day visit, a trip intended to whet the profitable Southern California market’s appetite for investment and trade with the United Kingdom.

While Andrew, 28, has made several official visits to the United States, this is only the second for Sarah, 28, and her first on the West Coast.

As if ordered up from central casting, she has bounded wide-eyed into the limelight, freckles, red hair and all, adding a new dimension to the continuing real life drama of Britain’s young royals.

She looks more comfortable in a mining helmet than a diamond tiara, tends to stride rather than walk, and is what one acquaintance diplomatically described as “a very vocal person.” Air traffic controllers at the Oxfordshire airport where she took her flying lessons last year gave her the identification “Chatterbox One.”

“There is certainly no one like her in the Royal Family,” said Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty, a monthly magazine that details the lives of Britain’s royals. “She’s very enthusiastic about life.”

In the refined atmosphere of British upper class society, this enthusiasm has occasionally been criticized as behavior unsuitable for a duchess.

“A fine girl, but a bit gauche,” said a veteran palace hand.

“She’s added a certain amount of fun to the ‘Palace Dallas’ scenario,” said Dickie Arbiter, who covers the Royal Family for London Broadcasting, the capital’s commercial radio station. “She’s a larger-than-life character.”

Certainly, the British public seems to like her. A public opinion survey conducted last year judged her the most pleasant and the most fun of all the Royal Family.

Much to the relief of Buckingham Palace, she has also reined in Prince Andrew, the family enfant terrible , helping transform his image from “Randy Andy, the playboy prince” into that of a responsible naval officer more in keeping with the title that his mother bestowed on him on his wedding day.

The House of Windsor

In the supporting cast that surrounds Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, at the head of the world’s best-known monarchy, the Yorks rank second in prominence, behind only the Waleses, Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

While some worry that the added publicity surrounding the Yorks further threatens the mystique that British constitutionalists believe essential to Royal Family well-being, others see them as a valuable addition to one of the most successful symbols of nationhood anywhere.

Although it is barely two years since the Yorks’ engagement was announced, the publicity surrounding their movements has been relentless.

Their wedding was viewed by a global television audience estimated at 500 million, from North America to China.

Speculation about a baby spiked interest earlier this year. Confirmation of the duchess’ pregnancy and the expected birth of their first child in August will keep the attention of royalty watchers focused closely on them.

But unlike Charles and Diana, who, as the future king and queen have tight constraints placed on their lives, the Yorks have so far managed to maintain a semblance of normality to their existence.

Andrew remains committed to a career in the Royal Navy, where he holds the rank of lieutenant. After six years as a helicopter pilot, including flying missions as a decoy to lure Exocet missiles away from British ships during the 1982 Falklands War against Argentina, he is scheduled to go to sea as a regular ship’s officer this spring.

The duchess kept her job as an acquisitions editor for a small Geneva-based publisher, Burton-Scira, until early this year. She helped produce a major book on the Palace of Westminster, better known as the Houses of Parliament.

According to royalty watchers, the Yorks share much in common, unlike the fun-loving, fashion-conscious urbanite, Diana, and the more serious, outdoorsy Charles.

A photo taken by Andrew appears on the jacket of the Palace of Westminster book, while Sarah learned to fly small fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters to better understand her husband’s work, feats that moved the British tabloids to dub her the “daredevil duchess.”

In their official capacities, the two attended 208 engagements in Britain last year, almost exclusively to promote charities. They notched up an additional 76 appearances during four official foreign visits to Canada, Mauritius, the Netherlands and France.

A Handful

The queen’s third child and the first to be born of a reigning British monarch in more than a century, Andrew was a handful from early childhood--frequently with dubious results.

“Sometimes aggressive, often obstructive, always confident and competitive,” summed up biographers Graham and Heather Fisher of the prince’s early school years.

When handed a new type of paint-sprayer at an urban redevelopment project during his last visit to Los Angeles four years ago, he dispensed the contents on the group of assembled photographers, an act for which Buckingham Palace paid $25,000 in repairs.

At Gordonstoun, the exclusive private school in Scotland he attended like his older brother and father before him, he captained the cricket team and played varsity field hockey. During his free time, he gained a private pilot’s license and made his first parachute jump.

At 19, he followed in his father’s footsteps to the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth and, at 22 was flying combat missions off the aircraft carrier Invincible in the Falklands War. Unlike Prince Charles, who often seems troubled by the social injustices of the nation that he expects one day to reign over, Andrew has so far displayed little interest beyond flying a helicopter and photography.

“He hasn’t really demonstrated he knows anything else is going on in the world,” said London Broadcasting’s Arbiter.

It was at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, when Andrew was just 16, that Buckingham Palace got the first warning signs of the prince as sex symbol. Woman’s Own magazine commented at the time that “If they’d handed out gold medals for sex appeal . . . the recipient would have been Prince Andrew.”

In the years that followed, gossip columns linked him with a seemingly endless string of women, but it was an American actress, Koo Stark, who proved his most embarrassing and, by most accounts, most serious, liaison.

Revelations that Stark had once appeared nude in a soft-porn film touched off a frenzy of scrutiny among the British tabloids that eventually ended the affair, and, according to his younger brother, Prince Edward, left him looking “more drawn, more tired, than three months at war.”

As the daughter of a retired army major who managed Prince Charles’ polo club, Sarah Ferguson was brought up around royalty. Photos show her and Andrew playing together as youngsters. At one time, she was considered as a possible lady-in-waiting to Princess Diana, but she was reportedly judged too inexperienced for the job.

It was only at the 4-day Royal Ascot racing meet in 1985 that romance sparked.

From the start, the duchess has managed the relentless public scrutiny with greater ease than her sister-in-law, Diana, in part because she was 7 years older and far wiser when she came into the limelight.

While Diana’s experience with the outside world was limited to a brief stint as a London nursery school teacher, the duchess had held office jobs, and had traveled widely, including an adventure bumming through South America by bus.

She also had a long affair with race driver Paddy McNally, a man nearly twice her age. Friends say she broke the relationship off in early 1985 when he refused to marry her.

In a recent interview with Majesty, her father described her as “street-wise.”

But the duchess also has had the expert advice of a close friend who had been through it all before: Diana.

Despite a sharp personality contrast, the two are said to be close friends.

Only once has the duchess lost her composure. Last year, she burst into tears when a large snake was suddenly thrust at her during a variety performance for her benefit.

While she has not shown it publicly, those who know her say she has been hurt by derogatory comments about her wardrobe and her weight.

Unlike her stylish sister-in-law, the duchess has no well-developed clothes-sense to cover hips that the British tabloids have estimated at 42 inches. Fashion critic Earl Blackwell included her on his list of the 10 worst-dressed women, while headline writers have occasionally labeled her “Frumpy Fergie” and “The Dowdy Duchess.”

But so far, such carping has failed to dampen her enthusiasm for her new life.

“She finds there are restrictions to it, but she’s adjusting,” Seward said. “In 1988, it isn’t possible to put on an act. You have to be yourself.”