Prior to the start of his relationship with Meghan Markle, Prince Harry had a reputation as a hard partier and an irrepressible ladies man.
The British tabloid press was obsessed with Harry’s dalliances with the opposite sex, and several of his romantic partners became celebrities in their own right.
Chelsy Davy, Cressida Bonas, and others became household names during Harry’s wild younger years.
Most of them, of course, have declined to offer their opinion on the high-drama feud that’s pitted Harry and Meghan against the rest of the royal family.
But now, one of Harry’s exes is breaking her silence and offering some kind words of support to the beleaguered Duchess of Sussex.
Though the relationship between Harry and Florence St. George (née Brudenell-Bruce) was a brief one, the former model experienced a small taste of the intense scrutiny that Meghan has been enduring for the past five years.
And not surprisingly, Florence says it’s not a fate that she would wish on anyone.
“A new story would appear almost every day in the press, my school friends were interrogated and there were photographers outside my front door,” Florence told Stella Magazine, according to the Daily Mail.
“I take my hat off to those people who can cope with that lifestyle, but I knew I couldn’t. Although it was sad at the time, I feel lucky that the relationship was short-lived.”
Florence and Harry dated for about two months in 2011, but she says that it was only toward the end of their time together that the press caught wind of the relationship.
“When I glimpsed for five, six, seven days — we were together a bit longer than that but that’s how long it was in the press — what it was like to be under that focus I found it really terrifying and I made a decision quite quickly that it wasn’t the right thing for me,” she recalled.
In an interview that took place last year, Florence described the experience of dating Harry as "terrifying," and she says the trauma she experienced a decade ago continues to impact her day-to-day life.
"It left me with a total fear of the camera and anxiety, which I think was creeping in even before the postnatal depression," she said.
Fortunately, Florence was later able to find happiness away from the spotlight.
In 2013, she married millionaire Henry St. George, the vice-president of the Grand Bahama Port Authority, in July 2013.
The couple share two children, Iris, 5, and Jimmy, 3.
As for Meghan … well, she continues to face daily challenges from the press and the royal family.
One royal expert recently claimed that Meghan is more hated than ever in the UK, although to be fair, his source on that seems to be his own imagination.
And just because she moved to a different continent and distanced herself from the drama in London as much as possible, that doesn’t mean the press will be letting up on the Duchess of Sussex anytime soon.
Last week, Meghan appeared on Ellen, and based on the reaction from the UK press you might have thought she’d used her time on the show to set fire to a British flag.
One commenter went so far as to suggest that Meghan might kill the Queen … by sitting down for an interview with Ellen DeGeneres.
So yeah, we’re sure Harry is a wonderful husband and father, and marrying a prince probably has its advantages.
But in many ways, Florence really dodged a bullet.
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