As Harry turns 31, a new beard and romance with an old flame
He’s had secret trysts in Africa with one. The other’s said to have split with her boyfriend and to want him back. So as Prince Harry turns 31, will it be . . .
AFTER an uncharacteristically dull hiatus in his high-octane romantic adventures, Prince Harry’s love life has suddenly become interesting again.
For those who need a gentle reminder, Harry’s affairs of the heart to date can be summarised thus. He falls in love with Chelsy Davy; he splits from Chelsy Davy. He falls in love with Cressida Bonas; he splits from Cressida Bonas.
Now there is speculation that, depending on which report you read, he might be getting back together with either of them. So what is going on? Yesterday Prince Harry turned 31, and with the passing of another year there is inevitable speculation as to when he will get married and settle down, or even get a girlfriend.
His single status has attracted so much comment that he has even been described as a lonely ‘Bridget Jones’ figure.
How can that be, when he is handsome, charming, a natural with children and fifth in line to the throne? Well, all that may be about to change. Rumours have been circulating for several weeks that Harry and Zimbabwean lawyer Chelsy, who dated for seven years until 2011, are on the verge of getting back together after meeting up in Africa, where the Prince has spent the past three months, ostensibly on a wildlife conservation project. Cue fevered excitement from royal-watchers. Yesterday, however, Cressida’s name also entered the fray after it was reported that she had split up from her boyfriend, the actor edward Holcroft.
It was suggested that Cressida, 27, had started to regret splitting up with Harry and wanted to give things another go.
After all, there’s nothing like a bit of jealousy — and there’s no reason why Cressida shouldn’t have read all the gossip about Harry and Chelsy — to stir up romantic nostalgia.
A friend of Cressida told the Mail yesterday, however, that this is not the case and that, in fact, Cressida has no regrets about the end of her relationship with Harry. If there are regrets, they are very much on the Prince’s side.
Indeed, it was apparently due to Cressida’s lack of interest in rekindling their romance that Harry turned his attentions back to Chelsy.
The Prince recently returned from Africa, where he was working on projects in countries including Botswana, Namibia and South Africa.
In South Africa he took time out to meet up with Chelsy and her family, and it has been reported that this meeting was not merely a friendly catch- up with an ex- girlfriend but part of a deliberate campaign to win Chelsy back.
Adding currency to the rumour of a fresh romance between the couple, another newspaper reported at the weekend that 29-yearold Chelsy has helped Harry’s friend Guy Pelly to organise a combined birthday and welcome-home party for Harry.
Yesterday Harry, sporting a new beard, spent his birthday taking part in an RAF flypast at Goodwood Aerodrome in West Sussex, to mark the 75th anniversary of victory in the Battle of Britain.
The party is said to be planned for later this week, a booze-fuelled cruise on the Thames with his closest friends.
‘Harry still holds a candle for her (Chelsy),’ a source said last week. ‘Chelsy has his heart. They saw each other recently. There’s still very much something between them, but Chelsy won’t commit yet because she doesn’t want to lead a life in the spotlight. Harry’s very sensitive to that. He has never fallen out of love with Chelsy.’
Chelsy’s changing appearance over the past few months has also been deemed significant. She has lost weight, and has been posting alluring pictures of herself on social networking sites.
One shows her in a strapless cerise top. In another she is wearing a bikini, heavily tanned, holding a drink. Yet another shows her on a paddle board on a calm blue sea, again in a bikini, her trim figure very much on display.
At The South Kensington Club’s Summer Party in London in June, Chelsy showed off a new shorter, sharper haircut that enhances her slimmer figure.
In the days of her romance with Harry, Chelsy, who comes from a very wealthy Zimbabwean family, did not always pull it off in the style stakes.
With her long bleached hair and occasionally garish clothes, there was often an air of bling about her. But the new Chelsy is more elegant and under- stated — part of a strategy to turn herself into the perfect consort for a Prince, perhaps?
Yet if her relationship with Harry failed the first time, why would a second try be more successful?
During their relationship, Chelsy was unhappy with Harry’s flirtations with other young women, including Florence Brudenell-Bruce, an underwear model. Friends says she always suspected that he wasn’t entirely faithful to her.
This naturally caused friction. But according to a close friend, it was the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in 2011 that brought home to Chelsy the realisation that she was not cut out for life in ‘the Firm’.
‘The royal wedding was a wake-up call for Chelsy. It highlighted how she didn’t fit in with Harry’s family,’ says the friend.
‘This had always been an issue in her relationship with Harry but the wedding made it crystal clear. It made her realise that she would never walk up the aisle like Kate, so what was the point of delaying the inevitable?
‘It put everything in perspective and made Chelsy finally decide to call it quits with Harry. She told him that she saw no future in the two of them being together.’
Despite this, Chelsy, who went to Leeds University after attending Cheltenham Ladies’ College, hoped that Harry would put up some resistance. He didn’t. ‘What Chelsy wasn’t expecting was Harry’s response. He told Chelsy that he felt the same way and said she was doing him a favour by calling it a day, that she was saving both of them from wasting any more of their lives.
‘Chelsy was upset when Harry told her that. Part of her was hoping that he would try to persuade her to give their relationship another try.’
This insight into the end of the relationship appears to suggest that any reconciliation would be shortlived. Prince Harry, after all, remains one of the most high-profile members of the Royal Family.
It could only work, then, if Chelsy has changed and decided that, like Kate, she is ready to embrace the life of a royal after all.
Certainly, Chelsy appears to have
‘The Prince never fell out of love with Chelsy’
decided she is not cut out for work of a conventional nature.
The trainee solicitor gave up her position at City law firm Allen & Overy last October to ‘pursue new interests’.
These interests include reportedly joining a group of professional DJs on tour, going on a car rally through Europe, attending lots of parties and going on regular holidays.
Despite her new-found reputation as a party girl, Chelsy possesses a fierce intelligence. Her university friends might have expected her to embark on a serious career path but that has not so far been the case. Perhaps she has decided there is no point if she is to become the wife of a prince.
In some ways, Chelsy is more suited to royal life than she perhaps lets on. The daughter of a multimillionaire businessman who made his fortune running a safari business, she enjoyed a colonial lifestyle as she grew up, a big house and servants to wait on her.
Last year, Chelsy began a relation- ship with Charles Goode, who runs a jewellery business, and they spent the summer travelling in Africa. They split, however, last January, and it is believed that Chelsy has been single since then — a fact which has apparently led to Prince Harry contemplating the possibility of a reconciliation.
So what of Cressida Bonas? Has she perhaps seen the reports about Harry and Chelsy and decided she must make her move before it’s too late?
‘She’s considering making another go at it with Harry,’ a source reportedly told The Sun yesterday.
‘She still holds Harry dear and always felt he was The One, even though she ended the relationship to focus on her acting career.’
Yesterday Ms Bonas’s agent refused to comment on the report that she had split up with Mr Holcroft. A friend, however, said the report in The Sun was ‘incredibly inaccurate’ but refused to elaborate. For a time, Cressida and Harry’s romance seemed to go very well. She is from an aristocratic family —her mother is Lady Mary Gaye Curzon, a four-times-married socialite — and was naturally at ease with Harry and his ilk, more so than Chelsy.
But like Chelsy she, too, appeared to balk at the idea of becoming a royal bride, with all the accompanying scrutiny and restrictions the role would bring.
There was a row over an air fare to America for his friend Guy Pelly’s wedding, which Cressida expected Harry to pay because she didn’t have the money herself and felt that as Guy was his friend, not hers, the request seemed reasonable enough.
Harry refused, there was a spat and they split. But once the dust had settled they became friendly once again.
Shortly before leaving for Africa this summer, Harry watched Cressida perform in the West End play An Evening With Lucian Freud.
But that was before his great African adventure — and becoming reacquainted with Chelsy.
Whether the Prince and Chelsy Davy are ‘meant to be’ remains an open question. But as friends, or lovers, let’s not forget what the 19year- old Harry told his father Prince Charles all those years ago: ‘Papa, she’s the one.’
Cressida always felt that Harry was The One