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Chelsy and Harry dated on and off for seven years after meeting as teenagers. The relationship, which has been described as “turbulent”, was made more challenging by the interest of the media, something Harry has struggled with over the years. In his Apple TV+ series on mental health with Oprah Winfrey entitled ‘The Me You Can’t See’, Harry opened up about the trauma of losing his mother and the anxiety he felt over performing royal duties.
Five years ago, he released an official statement asking the press to “pause and reflect” on their alleged “harassment” of his then-girlfriend Meghan Markle.
However, Meghan was not the first girlfriend of his to be put in the spotlight.
Zimbabwean-born Chelsy first started dating Harry back in 2004 when she was a boarder at Stowe School.
She later told The Times of how she had been pursued by the paparazzi during her relationship with Harry.
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“My girlfriend is somebody who’s very special to me, and yes, she’s gone through some very hard times.”
As a young woman, Chelsy was trying to build a career in leverage law, which she found exhausting with “back-to-back deals, working till 4am, conference calls at eight”.
But when she did have time off and wanted to blow off steam with her friends, pictures of her exiting nightclubs ended up splashed in the newspapers.
She said: “I like to enjoy life, but I like to achieve things and am very ambitious.
“They can be forgiven for not knowing I was working really hard, I didn’t shout about it.
“If you go out once, they take a picture, but they don’t take a picture of you going to work every morning, it’s of you falling out of a nightclub at 4am.”
Eventually the combined pressure of City law and the stress of being Harry’s girlfriend got too much and they parted ways.
Chelsy was said to be sure she had made the right decision when she attended Prince William and Kate’s wedding in 2011.
Katie Nicholl wrote in her biography ‘Harry: Life, Loss and Love’ that the wedding “made Chelsy’s mind up once and for all”.
She continued: “The life of a royal bride was not for her and she told Harry she could never make the sacrifices Kate had made.”
‘The Me You Can’t See’ is now available to stream on Apple TV+.
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