Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriend Cressida Bonas has shared the first picture of her baby boy amid the release of the Duke of Sussex’s tell-all memoir.
On Thursday (5 January), Bonas – who dated the royal from 2012 to 2014 – shared a photo to Instagram of her embracing her newborn and sausage dog.
“Welcoming 2023 with these 2 treasures,” she captioned the photo. “Happy new year everybody.”
The post was shared after Prince Harry’s forthcoming autobiography Spare leaked ahead of its release on 10 January.
In it, the Duke of Sussex opened up about the pair’s relationship, reportedly saying that the first time he cried about his mother Princess Diana after she was buried came when he broke down during a conversation with his then-girlfriend Bonas.
Harry wrote that Bonas asked about his late mother “with the perfect combination of curiosity and compassion”.
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘Oh no, I’m crying.’ It’s the first time I’ve been able to cry over my mother since we buried her,” he wrote (via Hello!).
Bonas was introduced to Harry in 2012 by Princess Eugenie, with the couple dating for two years.
Sharing why their relationship ended, Harry wrote that Bonas did not want to “take on the stresses that came with being part of royalty”, adding that he was also unsure if he wanted to ask her to be “part of it”.
Bonas and her husband, real estate broker Harry Wentworth-Stanley, welcomed their baby son at the end of 2022. The pair married in a private wedding ceremony in July 2020.
In a previous interview with ES Magazine, the White House Farm actor opened up about her initial wedding plans and how she wanted to keep her big day intimate.
“I won’t have a huge wedding, that’s not really us,” she explained. “We aren’t traditional people, even though Harry [Wentworth-Stanley] proposed in a traditional way – I’ve never thought about how someone would propose to me. And I don’t want a meringue dress. People look beautiful in them, but I don’t think I would.”
The actor has previously said that she feared becoming an “it girl” following her relationship with the royal in case it overshadowed her acting career.
“I work very hard and love what I do – I just want to continue. But it is still something I have to contend with. It is what it is. People will perhaps always ask me about it,” she told Australia’s Daily Telegraph in 2020.
Prince Harry’s forthcoming memoir was accidentally released in bookstores in Spain on Thursday (5 January), five days ahead of its official release.
