A look back at Prince Harry and Chelsy Davy's relationship as he blames press for split in hacking trial

Long before Prince Harry met Meghan Markle, Chelsy Davy was without question a pivotal figure in his life. In the ongoing High Court case against Mirror Group Newspapers, the BBC reports that “In a witness statement, Prince Harry claimed Ms Davy decided that ‘a royal life was not for her’ following repeated acts of harassment. 

The article goes on to say that Prince Harry’s lawyers are alleging unlawful activity and “This included journalists booking into a hotel in Bazaruto, a small island off the coast of Mozambique, where Harry and Ms Davy had tried to escape in order to ‘enjoy some peace and quiet,’ the document reads.”

Although Prince Harry is now married to Meghan Markle, the court case must be bringing back difficult memories for both him and Chelsy Davy when it comes to the reasons why their relationship came to an end. The couple had an on-off relationship for six years between 2004 and 2010 and Prince Harry references Chelsy multiple times in his memoir Spare.

This extract from Spare couldn’t correlate more with Prince Harry’s claims that press intrusion was to blame for the demise of his relationship with Chelsy Davy. “Chels said again that she just wasn’t sure she was up for this. A lifetime of being stalked? What could I say? I’d miss her so much. But I completely understood her desire for freedom. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t want this life either.”

Rereading this extract several times, it is impossible not to feel desperately sad looking back at the predicament both Prince Harry and Chelsy Davy faced. Chelsy Davy obviously did not feel that she was able to cope with the press intrusion, and Prince Harry wholeheartedly understood this. He understood it because he felt it too and in many ways his meeting with Meghan Markle and their decision to step back as senior working royals not only stems from his childhood but the life he felt he had to endure when dating Chelsy Davy. 

Prince Harry first started dating Chelsy in 2004 after reportedly crossing paths in South Africa during Prince Harry’s gap year. In Spare, Prince Harry details a meeting he had with Chelsy’s parents in South Africa. “They were impossible not to like,” he said. “They enjoyed funny stories, gin and tonic, good food, and stalking. Her father was bear-sized, broad-shouldered, cuddly, but also a definite alpha. Her mother was petite, an amazing listener, and a frequent bestower of epic hugs. I didn’t know what the future held. I didn’t want to put any carts before any horses, but I thought: "If you designed in-laws from the ground up, you couldn’t do much better than these guys.”

In an interview with The Times in 2016, Chelsy Davy talked in detail about the press intrusion. “It was so full-on: crazy and scary and uncomfortable. I found it very difficult when it was bad. I couldn’t cope. I was young, I was trying to be a normal lid and it was horrible.”

Chelsy Davy is not the only girlfriend of Prince Harry that found the press intrusion difficult to handle and it has been reported that the ‘press intrusion’ also had a part to play in why his relationship with Cressida Bonas did not work out either. Prince Harry dated Cressida for nearly three years from 2012 and was reportedly introduced to her by his cousin Princess Eugenie. 

Royal commentator Ingrid Seward told The Daily Mail in 2016 that “A friend of mine’s daughter went out with Prince Harry, Cressida, the most gorgeous girl, she just said it was awful because every time she walked down the street she could hear people criticising her.”

Although Prince Harry’s relationships with both Chelsy and Cressida came to an end, they came to his wedding to Meghan Markle. Chelsy is now married to hotelier Sam Cutmore-Scott and they share a son, Leo. Cressida is married to another Harry, Harry Wentworth-Stanley and they have a little boy, who is called Wilbur James. He is reportedly called James as Harry’s brother James Wentworth-Stnley tragically took his own life at the age of 21 in 2006.