Prince Harry and Chelsy Davy pictured together in 2008. Photo / Getty Images
Prince Harry and Chelsy Davy pictured together in 2008. Photo / Getty Images
New details about the split between Prince Harry and former flame Chelsy Davy have come to light — and William and Kate played a surprising role.
According to a new book by journalist Angela Levin, it took being Harry's plus one at the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's wedding in 2011 for Davy to finally realise she wasn't cut out for royal life.
Prince Harry and Chelsy Davy first met at school and dated on an on-and-off basis from 2004, before ending it in 2011.
But the pair remained close, and according to Ms Levin's royal biography, Harry: Conversations with the Prince, Harry invited his ex to his brother's wedding in the hope of rekindling the romance.
However, according to The Mirror, Ms Levin claims the lavish nuptials finally convinced Davy royal life was not for her.
"A friend revealed that seeing the enormity and pomp of the day convinced Chelsy that she and Harry had been right to separate," Ms Levin wrote.
"Although they had a lot in common, she saw clearly that because they came from such different worlds it could never have worked, especially as she valued her privacy and guarded it so carefully."
Davy, a former solicitor who now runs a jewellery business, even helped her ex edit his best man's speech, convincing him to cut out some of the racier elements she thought might offend the Queen.
Harry had read it out at first over the phone to Chelsy in South Africa, who despite no longer being his steady girlfriend, has also been invited to the wedding," Ms Levin wrote.
Such an affair as the royal wedding would've been too much for Chelsy. Photo / AP
"She suggested he remove some of the racier anecdotes, including a reference to Kate's 'killer legs', as she didn't think the Queen would take kindly to laddish humour."
Davy, who was born in Zimbabwe to a safari farmer father and a former Coke model mother, met Harry at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire.
But despite the couple's very high-profile relationship, Davy never took to the public spotlight, once describing it as "crazy and scary and uncomfortable" in an interview with The Times.
The 32-year-old, who is believed to be dating 44-year-old TV producer James Marshall, went viral after she was snapped by photographers with a very glum expression during Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's star-studded wedding earlier this year.
It followed revelations from Vanity Fair that the former partners had an emotional "parting" phone call in the days before Harry's wedding to the former Suits actor.
A source reportedly told the publication: "It was their final call, a parting call in which they both acknowledged Harry was moving on.
"Chelsy was quite emotional about it all, she was in tears and almost didn't go to the wedding."
