Before Meghan Markle, Prince Harry’s most famous long-term relationship was with Chelsy Davy. The couple dated on-and-off for seven years before finally parting ways in 2011, but a royal biographer has recently revealed the real reason the couple split – and it’s linked to Prince William and Kate Middleton.
Prince Harry attended William and Kate’s wedding in April 2011 with Chelsy as his date, but according to journalist Angela Levin, writing in her royal biography, Harry: Conversations with the Prince, it was the scale of the royal wedding that led Chelsy to decide she wasn’t the one for Harry.
“A friend revealed that seeing the enormity and pomp of the day convinced Chelsy that she and Harry had been right to separate,” The Mirror reveals Levin wrote in her book.
“Although they had a lot in common, she saw clearly that because they came from such different worlds it could never have worked, especially as she valued her privacy and guarded it so carefully.”
At the time of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding, Harry and Chelsy were no longer together. But the Zimbabwe-born former lawyer reportedly attended as the Prince’s plus one nonetheless, in an attempt to rekindle their relationship.
Watching the media circus surrounding Kate Middleton on the day of her wedding, however, made Chelsy realise the royal life wasn’t one for her.
And it’s not surprising that Chelsy, who runs her own luxury jewellery brand, came to that conclusion. In an interview with The Times a few years ago, she reflected on the enormity of her relationship with Prince Harry, and everything that came with it.
“It was so full-on. Crazy and scary and uncomfortable,” she said. “I found it very difficult when I was bad. I couldn’t cope. I was young, I was trying to be a normal kid and it was horrible.”
Despite all this, Chelsy and Harry have remained friends, and the 32-year-old even attended her ex-boyfriend’s wedding to Meghan Markle in May of this year.
Arriving with another of Harry’s former flames, Cressida Bonas, Chelsy was said to have had an emotional phone call with the prince prior to his wedding.
“It was their final call, a parting call in which they both acknowledged Harry was moving on. Chelsy was quite emotional about it all, she was in tears and almost didn’t go to the wedding,” an insider said at the time.
H/T Cosmo UK