Prince Harry and Caroline Flack’s Relationship in Their Own Words

Prince Harry and Caroline Flack’s romance was brief, but seemingly left an impact on both the prince and the late Love Island U.K. host.

Harry was linked to the TV presenter in 2009 amid his on-again, off-again romance with Chelsy Davy.

“I knew [Natalie Pinkham] was friends with Prince Harry, and I’d never met him, so I thought, ‘Oh that’s quite exciting’, and for a moment I perked up,” Flack recalled in her 2014 book. “So I was just sitting there and he arrived with a few others in tow and we all spent the evening chatting and laughing.”

Per Harry’s memoir, Spare, the twosome saw each other “on and off” but never got serious due to U.K. media attention.

More than 10 years later, Flack was found dead in her East London home in February 2020. Four days later, the coroner confirmed Flack died by suicide. Harry commented on her passing for the first time in his book, released in January 2023.

“In the midst of all this darkness came the horrible news that my old friend Caroline Flack had taken her life,” he wrote, referring to his issues with his family over his and now-wife Meghan Markle‘s royal exit. “She couldn’t stand it anymore, apparently. The relentless abuse at the hands of the press, year after year, had finally broken her. I felt so awful for her family. I remembered how they’d all suffered for her mortal sin of going out with me.”

Flack’s former publicist subsequently deemed it “absolutely gross for Prince Harry to reveal such private details about Caroline Flack” in the book.

“The way in which the press spoke about her at that time and the reason they split are both very sad and it’s disgusting he’s brought up old long forgotten slurs she had to suffer in full view of the public around the world,” Alex Mullen wrote via Instagram at the time. “Of course Caroline reacted to them with humour and grace but privately she was deeply hurt; just the first of many injustices she didn’t deserve. … Harry’s decision to remind all of the terrible things said about her to help sell his appalling book is grotesque.”

At the time of her passing, Flack was dating English tennis player Lewis Burton.

“It’s already been a month I love and miss you so much, I never thought that one day I will never be able to see or speak to you again 💔,” he wrote in March 2020 via Instagram. “I wake up and think you’re going to be laying next to me or you’re going to call me in a minute. It just doesn’t seem real. I wish I could give you a kiss and a cuddle and say everything is going to be ok. I am so grateful I met you. I just want to make you proud.”

Harry, for his part, married Meghan in 2018 after less than two years of dating. They went on to welcome son Archie in 2019 and daughter Lilibet in 2021.

If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or considering suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Scroll through for more from Harry and Flack on their relationship:

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When Did Prince Harry and Caroline Flack Date?

In his book, Harry wrote that Flack was “the definition of carefree” when they met in 2009, adding that she had “been so light and funny.”

“Flack, they called her. She was funny. And sweet. And cool. I met her at a restaurant with some mates months after Chels and I had gone our separate ways,” he wrote. “She wasn’t taken aback that I didn’t recognize her, which I liked. She didn’t have a big ego.”

In her 2014 book, Storm in a C Cup, Flack recalled: “The thing about Prince Harry is that he has no choice. He’s not some egotistical rock star who wants loads of attention. That is his life. He didn’t ask for it, he just has to deal with it. In fact, I think he deals with it very well and he and his brother [Prince William] do great stuff for our country.”

She added that “on a personal level” she “really like[d]” Harry and considered him a friend. “I can only imagine how much he has to deal with in terms of press intrusion and I don’t intend to make it worse by discussing him further here — it would be unfair,” she wrote.  

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Why Did Prince Harry and Caroline Flack Split?

Days after initially connecting, they went out for “dinner and games” and a friend’s poker night. Within hours, there were photographers at Flack’s parents and friends’ houses hoping to get a shot of the pair.

“Very soon after they papped me and Flack, those photos set off a frenzy. Within hours a mob was camped outside Flack’s parents’ house, and all her friends’ houses, and her grandparents’ house,” he penned. “I continued to see Flack on and off, but we didn’t feel free anymore. We kept on, I think, because we genuinely enjoy each other’s company, and because we didn’t want to admit defeat at the hands of these arseholes. But the relationship was tainted, irredeemably, and in time we realized it just wasn’t worth the grief and harassment. Especially for her family. Goodbye, we said. Goodbye and good luck.”

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What Has Caroline Flack Said About Prince Harry?

“Once the story got out, that was it. We had to stop seeing each other,” she wrote in her 2014 book. “I was no longer Caroline Flack, TV presenter, I was Caroline Flack. Prince Harry’s ‘bit of rough.’ … They made me out to be a sex-crazed monster and my brother had to read that about his little sister. Plus it was all, ‘Prince Harry’s seeing some common girl who’s worked in a factory.’ Why? because they’d dug up that [I] had once worked in an abattoir packing meat — the only holiday job you could get in Watton.”

In Spare, Harry responded to Flack being branded as “rough” by the U.K. press, writing: “She was described in one paper as my ‘bit of rough,’ because she once worked in a factory or something. Jesus, I thought, are we really such a country of insufferable snobs?”

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What Did Prince Harry Say About Caroline Flack’s Death?

The prince then indirectly compared Flack’s passing to the importance of him and Meghan leaving the U.K. and their duties as members of the royal family. (Meghan was open about her struggles with depression before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex moved to the U.S.)

“It would’ve been impossible then to imagine this outcome,” he wrote about Flack’s 2020 death. “I told myself it was an important reminder. I wasn’t being overdramatic, I wasn’t warning about things that would never happen. What Meg and I were dealing with was indeed a question of life and death. And time was running out.”