Before he settled down with Meghan Markle, Prince Harry was in an on-again, off-again relationship with Chelsy Davy — and thought she might be The One as he watched Prince William and Princess Kate fall in love.
“Whenever I worried that Kate was going to be the one to take Willy from me, I consoled myself with thoughts of all our future laughing fits together, and I told myself how great everything would be when I had a serious girlfriend who could laugh along with us. Maybe it would be Chelsy,” Harry, 38, writes in Spare, out Tuesday, January 10.
Harry recalls sacrificing his relationship with Davy, now 37, as he traveled with the military. The twosome, who were first linked in 2004, called it quits for good in 2010.
“I completely understood her desire for freedom. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t want this life either,” he writes, revealing that they split shortly after he was awarded his helicopter pilot’s wings in May 2010. (Davy attended the ceremony and was seen chatting with Queen Consort Camilla.)
He writes, “The day I got my wings, I figured she got hers.”
Nearly one year later, Davy was in attendance at William and Kate’s wedding in April 2011. Harry writes that it was difficult “seeing Chels at Willy’s wedding” as he felt “a certain way” about the men trailing after her.
Davy gave a rare comment on her relationship with Harry in 2016, calling the attention “crazy scary and uncomfortable.”
Chelsy Davy and Prince Harry at the Army Aviation Centre, May 2010. Shutterstock
“I found it very difficult when it was bad. I couldn’t cope,” she told The Times. “I was young, I was trying to be a normal kid and it was horrible.”
That same year, Harry met Meghan, now 41, and it wasn’t long before she struggled too, later opening up about racism in the U.K. media and lack of support from The Firm. In November 2016, he released a statement defending the Suits alum. In Spare, he writes that the situation “generated a whole new onslaught” from his brother and father, King Charles III.
“Pa and Willy were furious. They gave me an earful. My statement made them look bad, they both said,” he writes. “Why in hell? Because they’d never put out a statement for their girlfriends or wives when they were being harassed.”
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex opted to stop working for Queen Elizabeth II in 2020, less than two years after their May 2018 wedding. Harry further opened up about his family’s relationship with the British press in their docuseries, Harry & Meghan.
“My dad said to me, ‘Darling boy, you can’t take on the media. The media will always be the media.’ I said, ‘I disagree.’ I have 30 years’ experience of looking behind the curtain and seeing how this system works and how it runs,” Harry said. “I mean, just constant briefings about other members of the family, about favors, inviting the press in. It’s a dirty game. You know, there’s leaking, but there’s also planting of stories.”
Spare will be released on Tuesday, January 10.