Prince Harry is one of the most talked-about people in the world, particularly since the release of his highly-anticipated memoir Spare.
The explosive book, hitting shelves earlier this week, recounts Harry's life from his point of view, detailing his relationship with the rest of the royal family before, during and following his step away from royal life.
The memoir also details Prince Harry's former relationships, with his words about ex girlfriend Chelsy Davy going particularly viral.
Harry dated Zimbabwean heiress Chelsy for seven years, starting their relationship during his 2004 gap year in Cape Town. The couple ultimately broke up in 2010 due to Chelsy not wanting a life in the spotlight, but little else has been known about their extremely private on again off again relationship until now.
“I remember her being…different," Prince Harry recalled of Chelsy. “Unlike so many people I knew, she seemed wholly unconcerned with appearances, with propriety, with royalty. Unlike so many girls I met, she wasn’t visibly fitting herself for a crown the moment she shook my hand. She seemed immune to that common affliction sometimes called throne syndrome.
“I’d always wanted to know what it might be like to meet a woman and not have her eyes widen at the mention of my title but instead to widen them myself, using my mind, my heart. With Chelsy, that seemed a real possibility. Not only was she uninterested in my title, she seemed bored by it. ‘Oh, you’re a prince? Yawn.’”
"I couldn’t help what my grandmother thought about it. Or the people," Prince Harry later went on to explain in Spare. "And the last thing I wanted was for Chels to change to please them... The whole world isn’t made to put up with constant scrutiny, and I don’t know if Chels could bear it, and I couldn’t ask her to. Chels insisted that she was not sure if she was prepared for all of that. A whole life with someone on your heels? What could I say to her?”
He added about their 2010 break up: “I completely understood her desire for freedom. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t want this life either. I would miss her very much, but I understood she put her freedom first." He concluded: "If I had the choice, I’d want to live like that as well.”
Harry and Chelsy ultimately parted ways, with the Prince recalling how "hard" it was running into each other again at Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding.
“She and I weren’t in regular touch, which was why Willy checked with me before inviting her to the wedding," Harry recalled in the book. "He didn’t want either of us to feel uncomfortable."
“There were loads of feelings still there," he continued. "Feelings I’d suppressed, feelings I hadn’t suspected. I also felt a certain way about the hungry-looking men trailing after her, circling her, nagging her to dance. Jealousy got the better of me that night, and I told her so, which made me feel worse. And a bit pathetic.”
While little else is said about Chelsy Davy in the memoir, the former couple certainly appear to be on good terms, with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle even inviting her to their 2018 wedding.
Spare by Prince Harry is available to buy now.
