BULAWAYO – Prince Harry’s romance with Zimbabwean Chelsy Davy crumbled because Queen Elizabeth II took a dim view of her free-spirited lifestyle, the British royal says in his new book.
Chelsy was born in Bulawayo in 1985 to Charles Davy, who owns a safari company, and Beverley Donald Davy, a former Coca-Cola model and winner of the 1973 Miss Rhodesia contest.
The Duke of Sussex confesses that he “wasn’t sure” whether Davy, now 37, was “the one” — despite dating her on and off from 2004 to 2011.
“I loved Chels’ ease, that she wasn’t complicated,” Prince Harry writes in his memoir, Spare.
“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 Chelsy 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.
Throughout the memoir, Harry goes into further detail about paparazzi stalking Chelsy, claiming they once placed a tracking device underneath her car.
“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. 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?” Harry writes.
“I would miss her very much, but I understood she put her freedom first,” he adds. “If I had the choice, I’d want to live like that as well.”
The two ultimately called it quits in 2011 when Chelsy announced their break-up via Facebook and Harry publicly declared himself “100 percent single.”
Later that year, Chelsy 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.
“The day I got my wings, I figured she got hers,” Harry said referring to his break-up shortly after he received his helicopter pilot’s wings in 2010.
