Cressida Bonas reportedly ended things with Prince Harry after watching coverage of Prince William and Kate Middleton's 2014 Australian tour with their oldest son, Prince William. The actress didn't want the attention that came with being royal.

Cressida Bonas reportedly ended things with Prince Harry after watching coverage of Prince William and Kate Middleton's 2014 Australian tour with their oldest son, Prince William. The actress didn't want the attention that came with being royal.

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Being a member of the royal family isn't either, and neither is dating one. Many a "commoner" have fled royal romances thanks to the pressure, criticism, and round-the-clock scrutiny that comes with being even royal adjacent. Case-in-point: Cressida Bonas, who reportedly dumped Prince Harry for exactly this reason.

According to The Sun, Cressida was "spooked" out of the two-years relationship after seeing coverage of Prince William and Kate Middleton's first royal tour with their oldest son, Prince George. Will and Kate's 2014 tour of New Zealand and Australia was a "wake up call" for the actress according to royal biographer Katie Nicholl, author of Harry: Life, Loss, and Love. She wrote:

"Cressida had been 'completely spooked' while watching TV coverage of William, Kate and George touring New Zealand and Australia that spring. There was no way she wanted that sort of attention and she told Harry so."

Harry, by all reports, was head over heels for Cressida and tried to convince her to stay with him, but "her mind was made up."

According to Nicholl:

"Harry suffered a real blow when she said, ‘I can’t do this.' I think she really broke his heart. Twice [Harry] had been left heartbroken because the women he had fallen in love with didn’t want to share the life he had been born into."

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The other woman who left Harry after deciding that the royal life wasn't for her was, of course, Chelsy Davy, his first love. In both women's defense, Harry's married life has certainly been the subject of intense interest and scrutiny—so they clearly made the right call for the kinds of lives they wanted to lead.

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Kayleigh Roberts
Weekend Editor

Kayleigh Roberts is a freelance writer and editor with more than 10 years of professional experience. Her byline has appeared in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic, Allure, Entertainment Weekly, MTV, Bustle, Refinery29, Girls’ Life Magazine, Just Jared, and Tiger Beat, among other publications. She's a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.