Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(50)
Alongside his visits to help conservation projects as well as his charity work for Sentebale and official duties, Harry made Africa his favorite holiday destination—especially when trying to impress a girlfriend. Before Meghan, he had taken TV sports presenter Natalie Pinkham, Zimbabwean-born Chelsy Davy, and actor Cressida Bonas on safari. Botswana was the preferred destination. As his biographer Penny Junor observed: “Africa is the one place on earth where Prince Harry can be truly himself. It is his ‘second home.’ Under African skies, he is not a prince he is just Harry.”
The problem with these romances was that once he arrived back in Britain, the HRH tag got in the way of building an honest, workable commitment. Harry’s previous serious relationships with Chelsy Davy and Cressida Bonas foundered because the women couldn’t cope with being in the spotlight. As Harry’s first serious girlfriend, Chelsy bore the unwelcome media attention for seven years. During their on-off relationship that lasted from 2004 to 2011, the feisty blonde was often described as the love of his life.
She became part of the royal set and was invited to the weddings of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and Princess Anne’s daughter, Zara Phillips, and rugby player Mike Tindall. The trainee lawyer admitted that she found it difficult to cope with the pressure. “It was so full on—crazy, scary and uncomfortable,” she later confessed. “It was tough being chased down the road by photographers. I was trying to be a normal kid and it was horrible.” These days, she enjoys a “calm” life making jewelry.
Cressida told a similar story. She put her acting career on hold during her two-year romance with the prince. Though nervous of the paparazzi, she agreed to join him in public at a charity event at Wembley Arena in north London. In a telling exchange, she felt that as an actor she was being defined by a “famous man” rather than what she had achieved herself. “Yeah, I think it’s that thing of being pigeonholed,” she complained. “Especially in this country [Britain] I find people are very quick to put you in a box or put you in a corner.”
Other girlfriends, such as lingerie model Florence “Flee” Brudenell-Bruce, a former girlfriend of Formula One racing champion Jensen Button, seemed to enjoy the limelight—but not Harry’s roving eye. For his part he complained, as have princes down the ages, about the difficulty of finding a partner who wanted him for himself. As one of his friends observed: “He’s always wary in case women throw themselves at him to make a name for themselves. And often the sincere ones who love him for who he is don’t want to live in the goldfish bowl that is the royal family for the next fifty years.”
But despite the obstacles, it doesn’t appear to have been too much of a hardship, the prince enjoying romances, confirmed or suspected, with a veritable galaxy of beautiful, successful women, among them, actors Sienna Miller and Margot Robbie, TV presenter Poppy James, Brazilian socialite Antonia Packard, and German model Anastasia Guseva. The list is by no means exhaustive. Just a few weeks before he met Meghan for the first time, he was seen “dirty dancing” with a pair of brunettes and downing shots at Jak’s bar in West London. Though his headline antics had been curbed, his newfound maturity remains tempered with a healthy dose of mischief.
10
Into Africa
In August 2016, as far as the public and media were concerned, Harry was taking yet another trip to Africa. The prince was scheduled to spend several weeks in Malawi helping to protect elephants from poaching before traveling to Botswana to work on measures to save the dwindling rhino population. He had taken part in a similar effort the previous year in Namibia. As well as his charity work, he was to be a guest at the August 6 wedding of his cousin George McCorquodale to Bianca Moore at Netherwood, a wedding venue, in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Unfortunately, the social occasion ended up eclipsing his good works. The Sun newspaper lasciviously described how the prince and his friends, all the worse for wear, were said to have stripped a younger cousin naked during a drunken late night session of high jinks. Under the headline JAGER LOUT HARRY STRIPS WED GUEST, a fellow reveler was quoted as saying: “Harry was on his best behavior during the wedding but afterwards he went pretty wild. Everyone was laughing having a good time.”
For all the banter and horseplay, Harry had something more meaningful on his mind. Later that month, after working with herds of elephants in Botswana, he was scheduled to meet Meghan at Johannesburg airport in South Africa to join her on the flight to Maun Airport in northern Botswana. The final leg of their journey was a bouncy ride along a series of dirt roads in a rugged 4×4 off-roader. At a roadblock the couple had to get out of their vehicle and walk across a disinfectant mat, a precaution to prevent diseases from the outside world getting into the vast game reserve. When the couple arrived at the exclusive tented camp known as Meno a Kwena, or “teeth of the crocodile,” they were greeted by breathtaking views across the dark blue waters of the nearby Boteti River, meandering along the valley below them. It was a magnificent natural paradise, with herds of elephants, zebra, and wildebeest cooling off in the waters. A casual visitor would never know that for nearly twenty years the river had been dry and had only come back to life in 2008 when millions of gallons of water came gushing through from the Okavango Delta due to a shift in tectonic plates.
Situated halfway between the delta and the spectacular Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the camp has nine luxurious guest tents, all with en suite bathrooms equipped with solar-powered hot and cold running showers.