There was understandable relief when Princess Beatrice’s year-long romance with American playboy Paolo Liuzzo finally broke apart in 2006.
Beatrice was just 17 at the time. Liuzzo, a polo-playing socialite, was seven years her senior and devoted to the sort of hard-partying lifestyle guaranteed to cause significant embarrassment to the royals.
At one point he’d been charged with manslaughter and possession of cocaine. Another time, he was convicted of affray.
Even Beatrice’s perpetually sunny mother, Sarah Ferguson, saw the downside of Paolo, noting of her eldest daughter that, ‘We all have our own journeys and have to learn our way.’
The Princess was said to have been heartbroken when this, her first serious romance, collapsed. And some of that sorrow returned, say friends, when Beatrice learned of Liuzzo’s sad death at the age of 41.
The man she’d once loved had been found in Miami hotel room, killed by a suspected overdose of drugs.
Princess Beatrice with her then boyfriend Dave Clark, who was taking part in Sir Richard Branson’s attempts to kitesurf across the English Channel in 2010
As Beatrice remembers Paolo in the coming weeks, however, she might be forgiven if she takes a moment to reflect on another past relationship – one that lasted rather longer and seemed to guarantee wedding bells, in fact.
But one which left Prince Andrew’s daughter anguished, vulnerable and depressed when, after a decade of waiting, it finally ran into the sand.
In Dave Clark, a clean-cut, tech-savvy entrepreneur, Beatrice thought she had found true love and, for many years, they seemed inseparable.
If Liuzzo was never a contender, there was much to recommend his replacement. For a start, Beatrice had been introduced to him by her cousin, Prince William.
Moving in the same wealthy circles, the two men had met each other when they studied in Scotland – Clark, now 38, at Edinburgh University and William, 41, at St Andrews.
Known as ‘Dashing Dave’, Clark combined good looks, easy charm and a transatlantic accent, the result of growing up in a family that lived between London and New York.
He had friends in common with the Yorks, including Sam Branson, son of multimillionaire entrepreneur, Sir Richard, and spent time on Necker, the Bransons’ private Caribbean island.
Even Clark’s chosen career was modishly forward-looking. Starting off with taxi-hailing firm Uber, he would later spend time working for Sir Richard’s space programme, at one point describing himself as a ‘future astronaut’.
The Duke and Duchess of York seemed pleased that their little girl had found someone so appropriate.
‘I love Dave. He’s cool,’ Sarah Ferguson cooed in a 2008 magazine interview, two years into her daughter’s new relationship. ‘I call him Mr Smiley because he smiles and he’s happy.’
Princess Beatrice with her ex boyfriend Dave Clark at London Fashion Week in 2010
To many of their friends – and certainly to Beatrice herself – this felt like the real deal.
Rarely apart, the couple graced an endless if predictable round of yacht parties, ski chalets and upmarket social gatherings – although they were not together, it should be said, at more formal royal occasions.
Ever loyal, Beatrice followed Dave to both coasts of America as he pursued his tech career. At one point she enrolled in a finance course in San Francisco, before following him to Manhattan and taking a job there in investment banking.
A royal wedding was widely expected – for a while at least.
Yet as the years passed, so the doubts began to form among Beatrice’s friends and family.
There was growing distrust in royal circles, in particular, including a suspicion that Beatrice’s connections impressed Clark a little more than they should have done.
Prince William shared the unease. Though he was the one who’d first introduced Clark to his flame-haired cousin, it is said that the Prince struggled to warm to the slick Anglo-American and that, whatever friendship there had initially been, had cooled.
Some, taking a more generous view, feel that Clark might well have realised the writing was on the wall for the relationship, but lacked the heart to tell Beatrice.
Things came to a head in 2011 when there was no room for him at William and Kate’s wedding. Beatrice arrived at Westminster Abbey with her little sister, Princess Eugenie, instead.
Perhaps mindful of his cousin’s past entanglement with Paolo, William is said to have been protective of Beatrice and told friends he didn’t feel Clark was right for her.
It’s also been suggested that William judged Clark too ‘indiscreet’ to invite to the wedding – which is to say that he was concerned, rightly or wrongly, that private information about the ceremony would end up in the media.
In any event, there would be no meeting at the altar for ‘Dashing Dave’ and Beatrice.
The decade-long relationship came crashing to an end when, in 2016, Beatrice offered Cark an ‘ultimatum’, insisting that they marry. She was rebuffed.
Not only did Clark fail to give her the response she needed, he promptly turned his attentions elsewhere – specifically to a leggy blonde advertising executive from the States named Lynn Anderson. They married in 2018.
Dave Clark with his wife Lynn Anderson in 2017, whom he married after rebuffing Princess Beatrice’s ultimatum
The shock of rejection was overwhelming for Beatrice, who sank into a malaise that lasted for almost two years – until, in 2018, she started dating Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, now her husband.
Her mother, too, is said to have been hugely disappointed at the collapse of the relationship, feeling as though she had lost a son when Dave exited the York family.
Why did Beatrice wait so long before pressing the point?
Friends point out that the birth of Princess Charlotte the previous year had bumped the Princess down the line of succession from sixth to seventh – meaning that, for the first time, she no longer required the permission of the monarch to get married. Did that change of circumstance help concentrate her mind?
‘It’s very sad about Paolo Liuzzo,’ said a friend of the family, ‘but the man who really shattered Bea was Dave Clark.
‘It’s safe to say he is no longer in royal circles. Everyone was surprised by how quickly he moved on. Some were appalled.
‘Lynn was willowy and elegant, stylish, well-connected and wealthy: it’s every jilted woman’s worst nightmare.’
If the break-up was hard for Beatrice, there are plenty who feel her vulnerability had been growing throughout the relationship.
‘Beatrice was very timid and insecure at that time. In hindsight, perhaps Dave didn’t bring out the best in her towards the end,’ says the friend.
‘She was being put down at the time by fashion commentators for having dreadful fashion sense, for being a little frumpy and, of course, it all came to a head with “Pretzel-gate”.’
That’s a reference to the flamboyant Philip Treacy headpiece worn by Beatrice for William and Kate’s wedding.
Featuring an outsized loop and cascading ribbon motifs on either side, the hat was compared to both a toilet seat and a German pastry.
There was a great deal of mockery – which Beatrice will have found hard.
Friends report that, during her decade with Clark, the Princess was sensitive to the point of being thin-skinned, yet sweet to the point of naivety.
As if she didn’t have enough to cope with, Beatrice was now obliged to steer her own passage forward as a non-working royal – a princess but without formal duties or official income.
‘For a time, Beatrice was somewhat adrift,’ says the friend. ‘She was stripped of her social dignity and her royal protection officers,’ continues the friend.
‘Bea was still discovering her own style, and still finding her own place in the world. The whole episode was actually worse than the polo-player era in a way.’
She also found herself teased about the number of holidays she was taking around this time – 17 trips in one year alone.
Beatrice eventually settled into an easy-going, Ibiza-loving crowd, including James Blunt and his wife Sofia Wellesley.
She re-established a career, becoming vice-president of partnerships and strategy at start-up firm Afiniti, a data and software company, which saw her jet between New York and London as a high-flying businesswoman.
Fate would eventually bring Beatrice together with Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi. He was rather more suitable than Paolo Liuzzo – and more committed than Dave Clark.
Fun-loving but serious, like Beatrice, Edo was stylish and handsome. He was well-connected, too, combining a good county family with Italian nobility.
Edo proposed in 2019 and one year later they had a quiet wedding at All Saints Chapel, Windsor.
It helped that the late Queen approved. She lent Beatrice one of her own gowns for the wedding day and posed for pictures outside the church with Prince Philip.
Today, say friends, the Princess is a different woman: happier, self-assured – and more stylish, too.
‘Clothes look great on her,’ says a friend. ‘Her figure is to die for. It must be Edo’s influence on so many levels. When she was with Dave she was more frumpy and shy.’
There’s a baby daughter, Sienna, aged two, and an eight-year-old stepson, Wolfie, from Edo’s previous relationship.
Princess Beatrice with Dave Clark at a charity polo match at Coworth Park in 2010
Beatrice is chatelaine of her own country house on the edge of the Blenheim Palace estate, which she frequently visits to see her friend George Blandford – heir to the estate – and his wife.
Her emergence as a tenacious woman of the world is complete.
The ‘new’ Beatrice was on display this week in London at a Soho book launch hosted by Prince Harry’s nutritionist Gabriela Peacock.
She seemed chatty and relaxed as she posed for pictures with Edo and her best friend Astrid Harbord.
And what of Dave Clark?
A friend said: ‘The truth is they met too young. Beatrice was 28 when she issued her ultimatum. She’d been with him since she was a teenager.
‘Those relationships often reach a “make or break” point. For Kate and William it was “make”. For Bea and Dave it was “break”. He relished that and never looked back.’
Today, Clark is a partner at Expa, a tech firm supporting start-ups. He’s now back living in the UK.
It is understood that Beatrice avoids Clark where possible, although her attitude today is quite different from a time, not so very long ago, when she felt too weak to face him.
They came close to bumping into each other at 5 Hertford Street, an exclusive Mayfair club, last year. The moment was captured on camera in March 2023 and was gleefully described as a ‘narrow miss’ for Beatrice.
Looking back, she’d doubtless agree about the ‘narrow miss’. Or a bullet dodged, perhaps.
