Prince Harry was a gentleman when writing about his exes in his 2023 memoir, Spare. He had a great deal of affection for Chelsy Davy, his first great love and his longest relationship before he met Meghan. Harry and Chelsy dated solidly for years in their early 20s, then they were off-and-on for a while. He invited Chelsy to his wedding, although he did not attend Chelsy’s 2022 wedding to Sam Cutmore-Scott. From the way Harry described his time with Chelsy, there was no big breaking point, nor were there many hurt feelings on either side. It sounded like they outgrew each other and Harry was the one who said “no mas.” In recent years, Chelsy has married, become a mother of two, grown a successful jewelry business and now she’s moving out of England. She and her husband are moving full-time to Mauritius. All of that inspired the Daily Mail’s Sarah Rainey to publish a very odd piece about Chelsy: “Why breaking up with Prince Harry was the ‘best thing that ever happened’ to Chelsy Davy.” LMAO, the breakup happened over 14 years ago??! Some highlights:
Losing Harry didn’t define her life: Losing a prince, and parting ways with the gilded life he had promised her, must – surely – be a source of lifelong regret? But this could not be further from the truth. Indeed, friends reveal Chelsy has positively thrived in the years since she split from Harry, with one telling the Daily Mail: ‘She’s never been happier. It’s strange to think of the parallel life she would be living if she’d stayed with Harry. But that was a long, long time ago. That break-up was probably the best thing that ever happened to her.’
Chelsy is happy & thriving: Far from being haunted by the end of the relationship that thrust her into the spotlight, Chelsy seems to have flourished out of it – and her life is going from strength to strength. Her jewellery brand, Aya Jewels, which she launched in 2016, having walked away from a career as a London solicitor, is thriving. With its covetable range of diamond rings from £150 and gold necklaces from £495, documents lodged at Companies House last year show Aya had over £175,000 in the bank, a figure which has risen year on year.
Chelsy on moving to Mauritius: ‘We got locked down on the island while visiting my parents during Covid,’ she explained this week. ‘While we were here, we got a bit further under the skin of the place from a non-holidaying perspective. It’s a bright, colourful, friendly dynamic and people just smile. All. The. Time. Most importantly to me, there’s a wonderful sense of community. Neighbours pop in for a sunset drink while the big kids teach the little kids how to catch crabs on the beach.’
Ingrid Seward on Chelsy & Harry: ‘She was the love of his life; that first love you never forget,’ Ingrid adds. ‘Their relationship was very passionate and romantic, with lots of dramas behind the scenes. She got on very well with Wills, who used to tease her about her South African accent, and with Catherine when she was younger. In those days, Harry was something of a free spirit, and Chelsy touched that chord within him. They bonded over his passion for Africa and they used to go on these wonderful trips abroad together. They just gelled – he was utterly head over heels for that girl….[But] she knew, as Cressida [Bonas, whom Harry dated from 2012 to 2014] did, that royal life just wasn’t for her. She was intelligent enough to see that from an early age. She wasn’t over-powered by ambition to better herself, or to marry into the Royal Family. At the end, she said to him: “There’s no way this is ever going to be my future.” And she was right. She would have hated it all, especially the Montecito madness that is now Harry’s life.’
Comparisons: Certainly, when one compares Chelsy’s life today with that of Harry and Meghan, their two worlds could not be more different. With the latter ensconced in a £22.6 million mansion in a wealthy Californian neighbourhood, Chelsy and Sam are on the verge of emigrating from Chiswick, West London, to a tropical paradise in the Indian Ocean, far from the trappings of celebrity. Grand Baie, where they spend most of their time, is an unspoilt enclave populated by fishermen, families and artisans. Everything she shares is genuine, honest and unfiltered – and, unlike Meghan, she hasn’t felt the need to drop her surname.
Chelsy & Meghan don’t follow each other on social media: Perhaps tellingly, Chelsy and Meghan don’t follow one another on social media; nor does Chelsy follow the Duchess of Sussex’s saccharine lifestyle brand, As Ever. This may be unintentional, of course. Or it may be because, two decades on, Chelsy realises what she has known, deep down, all along: that saying no to a lifetime with Harry was the best thing she ever did.
All of the bizarre sniping on Meghan is not coming from Chelsy, they’re just using Chelsy to bitch about every little thing about Meghan. Chelsy didn’t drop her maiden name, UNLIKE MEGHAN. Chelsy didn’t want to marry Harry, UNLIKE MEGHAN. Chelsy doesn’t live in a California mansion, UNLIKE MEGHAN. Chelsy didn’t have ambitions to marry into the royal family, UNLIKE SCHEMING MEGHAN!! Chelsy does social media the right way, UNLIKE MEGHAN! They’re actually making Chelsy seem obsessed, and I don’t think she is. Now, do I think Chelsy was in her feelings during Harry’s wedding? For sure. She just… doesn’t have much of a poker face. And that’s fine. But she moved on, she has young children and a husband. Everyone’s fine. Everyone except for the lunatic asylum that is Fleet Street.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
