Model Florence St George (née Brudenell-Bruce) recently opened up about her brief romance with Prince Harry and how she feels “lucky” it was so short-lived, after previously admitting the press’ scrutiny was “terrifying.”
“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, 35, told Stella Magazine, according to Daily Mail, about her short relationship with the Duke of Sussex, 37, that last two months in 2011. “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 (a.k.a. Flea) also revealed she struggled to deal with the media and having her “privacy [end] abruptly,” according to the Independent.
In 2020, Florence told the Times that her relationship with Prince Harry, albeit short-lived, was “terrifying.”
“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 said at the time.
The former model turned ceramicist added that the limelight “left [her] with a total fear of the camera and anxiety.”
Following the Duke’s wedding to Meghan Markle in May 2018, the couple stepped back from their royal duties in January 2020. The UK’s media culture, which Harry described in a May 2021 statement as one “of exploitation and unethical practices” that “ultimately took the life [of his mother, Princess Diana,]” played a large part in the couple’s decision to leave.
“We all know what the British press can be like, and it was destroying my mental health,” Harry said on The Late Late Show on February 25, 2021, while discussing his decision to move away from London. “I was like, this is toxic. So I did what any husband and what any father would do.”
During Apple TV’s docuseries The Me You Can’t See, released in May 2021, the Duke stated that “history was repeating itself” and that his mother “was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone that wasn’t white.”
“They’re not going to stop until [Meghan] dies,” he said at the time.
Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex, 40, currently live in Santa Barbara, California, with their two children, Archie, 2, and 5-month-old Lilibet Diana.
Florence went on to marry multi-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.