I was curious to see what Prince Harry would have to say about his ex-girlfriends in his memoir Spare. I was actually a little bit worried that he might be rude about them, seeing as he’s so in love with Meghan, everything else seems to pale in comparison. I didn’t need to worry though, at least from the selections I’ve read so far about his most significant relationship before Meghan. Harry spent seven years, on-and-off, with Chelsy Davy. It went from a teenage love story to something slightly more mature, as Chelsy stuck with him in his 20s, in his first years in the British Army. Harry writes about how much he loved Chelsy’s independence and spirit, but he felt weighed down by his family’s judgment.
Prince Harry alleges that Queen Elizabeth II’s opinion of ex Chelsy Davy’s free-spirited lifestyle contributed to their breakup.
“I loved Chels’ ease, that she wasn’t complicated,” the Duke of Sussex, 38, writes in his “Spare” memoir. “She didn’t care what anyone thought. She wore miniskirts and high-heeled boots, danced however she wanted, drank tequila like me, and all of this made me really happy.”
Harry admits, however, that what the late monarch thought of Davy weighed heavily on him at the time. “I couldn’t help what my grandmother thought about it. Or the people. And the last thing I wanted was for Chels to change to please them,” he continues.
The Duke of Sussex confesses that he also “wasn’t sure” whether Davy, now 37, was “the one” — despite dating her on and off from 2004 to 2011.
“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,” he explains. Throughout the memoir, Harry goes into further detail about paparazzi stalking Davy, claiming they once placed a tracking device underneath her car. “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? I would miss her very much, but I understood she put her freedom first. If I had the choice, I’d want to live like that as well.”
The two ultimately called it quits in 2011 when Davy announced their breakup via Facebook and Harry publicly declared himself “100 percent single.”
Later that year, Davy still attended Prince William and Kate Middleton’s April wedding — albeit singly — where Harry remembers feeling “a certain way” about seeing other men admiring her throughout the night.
LOL, I just remembered how Chelsy looked crazy-hungover at William and Kate’s wedding. She looked like she’d been partying for days. His relationship with Chelsy was a harbinger of Meghan though, and hear me out. He loved Chelsy’s IDGAF independence, which was the same thing he loved about Meghan – the fact that Meghan wasn’t part of this prissy, classist world. He was drawn to both women because they represented (to him) the kind of self-possessed rebellion he wanted for himself.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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- Prince Harry and girlfriend Chelsy Davy leave a service of remembrance for those who have died in Afghanistan, at the Army Garrison Church in Windsor. London, England – 05.05.08,Image: 335950167, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Anwar Hussein / Wenn / Avalon
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- The wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle at Windsor Castle. Broadcast on ITV1,Image: 372311182, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WENN does not claim any ownership including but not limited to Copyright, License in attached material. Fees charged by WENN are for WENN's services only, do not, nor are they intended to, convey to the user any ownership of Copyright, License in material. By publishing this material you expressly agree to indemnify, to hold WENN, its directors, shareholders, employees harmless from any loss, claims, damages, demands, expenses (including legal fees), any causes of action, allegation against WENN arising out of, connected in any way with publication of the material., Model Release: no, Credit line: – / Wenn / Avalon
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- Chelsy Davy The wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Pre-Ceremony, Windsor, Berkshire, UK – 19 May 2018,Image: 515244525, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: NO UK USE FOR SEVEN DAYS – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Avalon.red – sales@avalon.red London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles: +1 (310) 822 0419 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251 Madrid: +34 91 533 4289, Model Release: no, Credit line: – / Avalon
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- 135676, Chelsy Davy out and about in Mayfair. London, United Kingdom – Wednesday April 15, 2015. Photograph: © Palace Lee, PacificCoastNews. Los Angeles Office: +1 310.822.0419 sales@pacificcoastnews.com FEE MUST BE AGREED PRIOR TO USAGE,Image: 531400560, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WORLD RIGHTS, DIRECT SALES ONLY UNLESS STATED OTHERWISE IN CAPTION – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Avalon.red – sales@avalon.red London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles: +1 (310) 822 0419 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251 Madrid: +34 91 533 4289, Model Release: no, Credit line: Palace Lee, PacificCoastNews / Avalon
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- Chelsy Davy at the wedding of Princess Eugenie to Jack Brooksbank at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.,Image: 534310098, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: NO UK USE FOR SEVEN DAYS – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Avalon.red – sales@avalon.red London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles: +1 (310) 822 0419 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251 Madrid: +34 91 533 4289, Model Release: no, Credit line: – / Avalon
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- . 12/10/2018. Windsor, United Kingdom. Princess of Eugenie of York and Mr Jack Brooksbank Wedding. Chelsy Davy join Members of the Royal Family arrive at Windsor Castle for The wedding of Her Royal Highness Princess of Eugenie of York and Mr Jack Brooksbank.,Image: 534314110, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: WORLD RIGHTS – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Avalon.red – sales@avalon.red London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles: +1 (310) 822 0419 Berlin: +49 (0) 30 76 212 251 Madrid: +34 91 533 4289, Model Release: no, Credit line: – / Avalon
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- REF NWPIX Prince Harry received his flying badges at the Museum of Army Flying. Andover, England – 07.05.10 CHELSY DAVY WITH PRINCES HARR *** Local Caption *** +
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- 1st July 2007 Concert for Diana, Wembley Stadium, London. The concert held on what would have been the late Princess Diana’s 46th birthday was organised by her sons Prince William and Prince Harry to celebrate her life. Chelsy Davy, Prince Harry, in the Royal Box watching the concert.
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- CODE: Ferrari 9227 BBC 19/05/2018 OPS: Guests arriving for the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at St GeorgeÕs Chapel, Windsor Castle. One of Prince Harry’s former girlfriends, Chelsy Davy
I always liked Chelsy Davy– she seem cool. And she was definitely setting the precedent for his type!
Yeah, she really wasn’t the person the press made her out to be. They made her out to be a dumb party girl while she was studying for a law degree. It’s pretty clear Harry has always been attracted to smart independent women.
And look at that: RIPPED JEANS!!! 😱 I don’t recall nary a scream from ANY palace, do you???
Chelsy got a law degree. Kate did very little. Kate did a lot of partying. It was bias shown against chelsy as opposed to Kate.
By some in the media back then.
Chelsy did from what I have heard did well in her degree which explains her Training Contract at Allen & Overy. Of course they would have bent over to have her anyway for the cache, but yep she is defo not a Kate working in her parents factory part time just so she can be available for William.
I remember those partying days. Kate was out a lot at the various clubs William was at. She wasn’t working, but she was working – on William. And he was no goody-two-shoes, either. There were plenty of photos of him rolling ouch of those clubs at almost sunrise, looking very much the worse for wear. There might have been one line about him in the papers, but the articles were usually about Harry and his mates and their antics.
Kate was using her time to be always “there” until William decided to commit. How long did that take? Cheesy and Meghan also went to Uni, but took their studies seriously. I think Megan had a part-time job as well. Then they both went out into the world to work, becoming confident and independent women. Perhaps Kate still feels a bit inferior to Meghan. You really cannot compare the two. Meghan is confident, articulate, spontaneous, self-aware, accomplished, warm, intelligent… and Kate… has not put in the time and effort to develop the same traits. Being a stick-thin clothes hanger with an unlimited budget for wiglets, frilly, pussy-bowed nanna blouses and button-ey, 400-of-a-kind coat dresses is not the same thing.
I recall how much I preferred her to kate.
Me too!
It’s clear he wasn’t looking for a person who was willing to strip herself of her identity, her sense of self, in order to please the establishment. I understand why he didn’t overprepare Meghan, he didn’t want her to change.
This. It’s also good that Chelsy didn’t decide based on the nastiness and misogyny coming her way that she was going to ignore her limit, and try to force it to work anyway.
I think Chelsy Davy is the right one for Harry
I think and predict in; the future Harry and Chelsy
will both divorce and they will go back to each other
june
It wasn’t just Chelsy. Look at his dating history, a lot of non aristocratic types. He was always subconsciously looking for an out.
Also, if Chelsy was THE ONE, he would have fought for her like he fought for Meghan.
Yeah, he’s very diplomatically implying that there were no proposals and he didn’t see her as The One. Just the talk about what others like Elizabeth felt is a subtle hint imo.
Agreed.
This is so kind, Harry is clearly not out to hurt anyone, unless they earned it. Chelsy seems similarly happy with her life choices.
His careful phrasing indicates to me that he never actually proposed.
As well, like I’ve always said, Harry and Chelsy had a young, immature ‘first serious’ love relationship. They fought a lot. There were good times and bad times. They learned about what being in an adult relationship is like. They grew up together, finding it hard to juggle school, family commitments, royal duties, military service, and trying to be together, while challenged by the intense tabloid interest. It was already reported during the time they were dating that the palace never liked Chelsy. Now we know that the Queen didn’t approve of Chelsy either. Somehow, it’s pretty weird that a young chap has to worry or fret with ‘heaviness,’ over how his grandmother feels about his girlfriends. 🤪
The very fact that Harry supposedly even reflected on whether or not Chelsy was “The One,’ means he did at least consider the possibility of proposing, but he never did because he knew the firm and the Queen had reservations about her free-spirited independence. Plus, he didn’t want Chelsy to change, and he knew she had trouble putting up with the pap harassment! I mean seriously! What young teen/ twenty-something would be up for private investigators and reporters working for tabloids hacking your phone conversations, accessing your medical records, and placing tracking devices on your car! 😳 All this, plus pap cameras constantly flashing in your face. 🙄
Let’s be honest that had Harry and Meg met in their youth, it would have been a hard go for them too! Things worked out the way they were meant to work out. Meg’s first marriage taught her a lot about being with someone and gave her invaluable insights. The same goes for what Harry learned during his former relationships. By the time M&H met in their 30s, they were ready for each other, and also strong enough together to withstand the avalanche of onslaughts that would be launched against their union. M&H were meant to be together.
I recall the press during his Chelsy Davy years. I could never step into that.
The press was also way meaner to Chelsy than to Kate. All this pretending that Kate has it rough is mostly untrue especially when Chelsy was being called ugly or a drunk while Kate was jobless and out partying every night herself.
LOL, I just remembered how Chelsy looked crazy-hungover at William and Kate’s wedding. She looked like she’d been partying for days. His relationship with Chelsy was a harbinger of Meghan though, and hear me out. He loved Chelsy’s IDGAF independence, which was the same thing he loved about Meghan – the fact that Meghan wasn’t part of this prissy, classist world.
Yaassssss Kaiser. Amen to that. I hated seeing how folks dissed Chelsea. She seemed to really have Harry’s back in a way that clearly his own family didn’t. The way that Meghan DOES. I know that some think that Chelsea shaded Meghan at times but I don’t know. She supported Harry and in turn supported Meghan in my opinion.
People ‘dissed’ her because she allowed toxic comments on her IG. She could easily have deleted them or closed the comments.
I am not saying she has an issue with Meghan (I very much doubt it), rather I find it odd that they all provide fertile opportunity for idiots to propagate harm towards Meghan.
Eh, who knows. If you don’t have an assistant helping you out, who’s going to take the time and effort to manage that f’kery. I don’t know a lot about how Instagram accounts are managed. If there is a way to utilize a delete feature or turn off comments, she didn’t bother doing it. She may have deleted some comments for all we know, and then gave up.
Chelsy clearly cared about Harry. And he is said to have leaned a bit on her family emotionally during their time together.
@Flower, I think you may be thinking of Cressida Bonas who put toxic comments and photos on her Instagram page that were clearly dissing Meghan. I’m not aware of a public Instagram page for Chelsy.
It takes less than two seconds to close comments on IG.
As a royal male, Harry is clearly sui generis. The rest of them are looking for a lawn ornament.
Harry is not intimidated by smart women.
I wonder if Kate still tried to pull ranlnover Chelsy during the dating years. I saw pictures of them at polo matches and social events.
William and Kate were just dating then. I think the royals would have frowned upon her if she pulled rank over Chelsy just being a girlfriend.
Kate wasn’t always the girlfriend and so she wasn’t in a position to pull rank. At the Diana memorial concert Chelsy was sitting next to Harry whereas Kate was not and despite looking in that direction often.
But there were never stories of Kate being besties with Chelsy despite Chelsy being with Harry on and off for seven years and all that time overlapping when Kate was still a girlfriend.
The Diana Memorial Concert was in July 2007, just a few months after Kate and William’s infamous April 2007 breakup. The breakup didn’t last long, just a matter of weeks I think? I think it would have been weird for Kate to be there had they truly been broken up. I think they were already reconciled or in the process of reconciling but not public about it. In order to not detract from the concert and to have the press chattering the whole time if William and Kate were back together, she sat two rows behind William instead of next to him. On one hand, I guess it made sense but I think it was also disrespectful to Kate to make her sit back there. It wasn’t long after that that we heard they were fully back together. Chelsy sat next to Harry the whole time and it was fine.
If she was even invited in the first place then they really weren’t broken up and William was treating her like crap as usual. But I mentioned this because Chelsy was front and centre at the concert since Harry didn’t play games with her as William did with Kate.
And the media kept talking about kate sitting a few rows away. So again William being a jerk and she accepted it.
100%, Nic.
I maintain that one of the big appeals of Chelsy AND Meghan was that they weren’t British or royal. I’m sure Harry contemplated running off to South Africa to be with Chelsy. He was ALWAYS looking for an out whether he was conscious of it or not.
Mans was looking for an exit the whole damn time! That is why he kept pursuing independent, smart women as partners. The kind of women and partners who would buck up against the royal institution.
Agree! Harry always to leave the BRF and leaving the BRF was 100% HIS decision.
Meghan was only the guide to show him the exit door.
Yeah, it seems like they both realized that the relationship was not going to make it long term for a few reasons so they parted ways amicably and remained friends. I agree though that it seems like even then Harry was looking for someone outside of the aristo class, someone who wouldn’t bend to those expectations.
She was lovely. The way the media treated her in comparison to Kate was horrific. The names they called her and the photos they printed were nasty. But at least she was herself. Fake Kate could never.
Because I didn’t follow royal gossip until Meghan, I really didn’t know much about Harry before she entered his life, so my image of him was mostly formed by all the most negative publicity. All those stories about him partying, the infamous Nazi costume, and other incidents which I’ve since learned were mostly the result of him being scapegoated by his father and brother. He seemed rather, for lack of a better word, “fratty”, so I didn’t exactly have high expectations of what his relationships were like before Meghan. Once again, I’m so happy that I was wrong. Even in his more “scandalous” days, he admired a certain type of outgoing, outspoken woman and cared enough to fully respect Chelsy’s independence and tried to protect her privacy as much as possible, even if it meant having to let her go. Comparing this to his father’s and brother’s respective relationships makes that an especially pleasant pleasant surprise!
I’m surprised the Queen has some questions about Chelsy. I wonder if that played a part in Harry not popping the question to her. After all Harry would have needed to get the queen’s consent to marry her.
I am not at all surprised and I would guess that part or all of it was coming from William. Remember the gossip prior to Sussexit that William had told the Queen that Harry should not marry Meghan? We then find out from Harry’s book that William told Harry that Meghan and he may not last and he had to be OK with that. Did William try to get the Queen to withhold her permission from Harry? That’s pretty much what the gossip was.
I would not put it past William having complained about Chelsea to the Queen when Chelsea’s behavior was no worse than Kate’s, who by the way also wore mini skirts and high heel boots.
Finally, Harry could have married whoever he wanted to, with or without the Queen’s permission. If he did not have the Queen’s permission though, he would then fall out of the line of succession.
I remember thinking both Chelsy and Cressida Bonas looked lovely at the wedding. I still do. It’s nice that Harry has nothing but good things to say about her.
I’m sure Chelsy was one of the people who encouraged him to wear that Nazi Costume. She didn’t even bother to break up with him after that incident.
IIRC, Harry called Chelsy after the incident and said he made a big mistake. I don’t think she was even in England at the time.
You seem to be making a lot of negative comments towards H&M on these threads. If you don’t like them, you don’t have to engage ya know.
Utter nonsense. She was back in SA at the time. Harry was urged to do it by William and Kate. Period.
I read a disgusting courtier apparently said, “this relationship can’t get serious with a name like that, can you imagine Princess Chelsy”. Nasty people. I always think they were lovely together and genuinely in love. Put it this way, Harry never stood on a table when they broke up shouting “the witch has gone, I’m free!”, or whatever William chanted when he and Kate had one of their breakups and she got him back by roller skating in neon shorts or some crap like that!
A courtier said that Chelsy would not know what fork to use at a state dinner and compared her to the character in Jungle Book.
The courtiers are a nasty bunch.
Harry and Chelsy were the picture of young love. You can’t deny the chemistry in the pictures of them together in those early years. William and Kate never had that sizzle.
But they grew up and she realized being with him was not the kind of life she wanted long term. He realized he could not give her the kind of life she wanted long term. It was probably a difficult ending, but that’s part of growing up.
This shows that Harry has always been attracted to the independent woman. Meghan came along and had those same qualities that he always admired, but he/they thought she had experience dealing with the media and could actually thrive being a member of the BRF.
I don’t understand the need to put down Chelsy to defend Meghan as “the one.” That’s not how relationships work. It’s healthy to acknowledge that anyone that we choose to develop a relationship with (current or past) is a reflection of who we are as a person, and that other person’s interactions with us influences who we become. Chelsy was a formative part of Harry’s youth. I always liked her.
Really well said. My sentiments exactly. I thought Chelsy was lovely at the time.
I always enjoyed seeing photos of them together and thought they looked really cute. Glad they are both happy!
Chelsy probably looks at Meghan and goes “There but for the grace of god, go I.”
I’m glad Harry was nice about it. It seems like he and Chelsy are on good terms, I kinda get the feeling Cressida is not so positive about the Harry’s-famous-stalkers experience though.
I remembered during that time, the British press compared Chelsy to cheap beer while Kate to expensive champagne. A British tabloid propaganda to make Kate look like the perfect saint while making Chelsy the punching bag and 2nd class citizen compared to Kate . When in fact Chelsey is an intelligent independent woman that got her economics and law degree, and is an entrepreneur. While Kate got a degree in art history(rolling eyes 👀 )but only like worked for 1 month after college and then couldn’t hack the workforce-so she made a career out of partying to attach herself to wealthy men (supposedly quit her job to work for her parents company, yeah whatever lol).
And they call Meghan a social climber LOL! I can definitely see Kate at that time being intimidated and envious of Chelsy. Kate reminds me of the character in “Coming to America” where she does whatever Eddie Murphy’s character(the prince) tells her what to do(if he says bark like a dog she would bark like a dog too lol ).