Buckingham Palace confirms royal couple have divorced
Buckingham Palace has confirmed Lady Davina Windsor and husband, a New Zealand native, Gary Lewis, have divorced after 14 years of marriage.
Quipped as an unlikely match, the split breaks apart the great-granddaughter of King George V and the first New Zealander to marry into the royal family.
Lady Davina is daughter to the Queen’s first cousin, Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and is 30th in line to the throne.
“It’s very sad, but their differences were just too great in the end,” a friend of the couple told the Daily Mail.
Gary was the first person of Māori descent to marry into the British royal family.
Hopeful royal onlookers used the pair’s union as “proof” that marriages between royalty and commoners were not at all impossible.
Lady Davina and Gary, a carpenter by trade, met while on holiday in Bali in 2000. They married in the private chapel at Kensington Palace four years later in 2004.
The royal couple moved to a working-class suburb in Auckland before eventually trailing back to Britain.
The couple lived a relatively private life, although appearing at the Trooping the Colour ceremony as well as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding ceremony.
As children, Prince William was often pictured running around Buckingham Palace with his older cousin, Lady Davina and her sister Lady Rose Windsor.
The couple share two children, Senna Kowhai, eight, and Tane Mahuta, six. Gary also has a 26-year-old son from a previous relationship.
“Gazza”, Lewis is allegedly known to friends as, is the son of a champion sheep-shearer.
While the reason behind the divorce remains unknown, both Lady Davina and now-ex-husband are both said to remain “actively involved in the upbringing of their children.”
Scroll through the gallery above to see the royal couple.