Chelsy Davy has explained why she never married Prince Harry, admitting that for much of her adult life she was "only committed to having fun."
The jewellery designer, 40, dated the Duke of Sussex on and off for around seven years before their relationship ended in 2011. In a candid reflection posted on her Aya jewellery website, she said that during her twenties and thirties, commitment was not her strong suit.
"Looking back... commitment wasn't exactly my strong suit," Chelsy wrote. "I wanted the next trip, the next adventure, the next group of people I hadn't met yet. I lived in Istanbul. I travelled around South America. I went to Bali, the Amazon, Moscow."
A fierce protection of freedom
Chelsy explained that she was "fiercely protective" of her freedom and had never been particularly interested in marriage or motherhood. "Both seemed to represent exactly the things I had spent my adult life avoiding: permanence, responsibility, roots and having to take somebody else's plans into account," she wrote.
In his memoir Spare, Prince Harry recalled his worries about how his grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth, might view Chelsy's free-spirited nature. He wrote that Chelsy wore short skirts and high boots, danced with abandon and drank as much tequila as he did, but he feared how "Granny" or the British public might feel about those qualities.
Meeting Sam Cutmore-Scott
It was during lockdown in 2020 that Chelsy met her hotelier husband Sam Cutmore-Scott. She said she knew she wanted a family "specifically with him," though she had not suddenly developed a romantic vision of settling down.
"I met Sam and, for the first time, I knew I wanted a family, specifically with him," she said. The couple married in a private ceremony in Mauritius in 2022 and now have three children: four-year-old Leo, three-year-old Chloe and six-month-old Finn.
Motherhood's unexpected impact
Chelsy said motherhood has transformed her life in ways she could not have predicted. "My children have restricted my freedom in almost every possible sense," she wrote. "They ruin plans, interrupt phone calls, make spontaneity almost impossible and are an absolutely astonishing financial drain on my existence. And I am completely and utterly obsessed with them."
She also revealed an "endless low-level anxiety" that something might happen to her children, which became particularly real when her youngest son Finn contracted meningitis at just two weeks old. Chelsy has spent only nine days away from Leo in almost five years, five of which were while she was in hospital with Finn.
Although she admits there are moments when she misses the spontaneity of her old life, she has no desire to return to it. "I loved that life, and I'm very glad I had it," she said. "I just wouldn't swap this one for it."
