The father-of-one millionaire property developer who has stolen Princess Beatrice’s heart: Son of a skiing count and an MBE mother has proposed after a whirlwind 11-month romance
Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi at the wedding on Lady Gabriella Windsor in May this year
The soon-to-be newest member of the royal family is a 36-year-old property developer with a toddler son from a previous relationship.
Princess Beatrice, 31, announced her engagement to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi today, just 11 months after the couple first started dating.
Known as Edo to friends, the millionaire has been credited with mending Beatrice’s broken heart following her split from Dave Clark in 2016 after 10 years together.
It is not the first time that Mapelli Mozzi has been betrothed, having once been engaged to the glamorous Chinese-American architect Dara Huang.
The pair, who as of last year were still sharing a London home despite their split, share a young son named Christopher Woolf.
Beatrice, who has known Edoardo for several years, is said to have begun dating the millionaire after meeting him again at Eugenie’s wedding in October last year.
Edoardo, the son of former Olympic skier Count Alessandro Mapelli Mozzi and Nikki Shale, is a count himself, and has been a friend of the Yorks for some time.
He was educated at the prestigious Radley school in Oxfordshire before studying for a Master’s in politics at Edinburgh.
His stepfather and Nikki’s second husband was Christopher Shale, a senior Tory and a close friend of former prime minister David Cameron.
Edoardo the son of former Olympic skier Count Alessandro Mapelli Mozzi (pictured competing in 1972)
Edoardo’s mother is Nikki Shale, whose second husband was Christopher Shale, a senior Tory and a close friend of former prime minister David Cameron
He died from heart disease in 2011 at Glasonbury Festival, after going missing for about 18 hours before he was found in a cubicle in the VIP area.
An inquest subsequently found he had been suffering from undiagnosed heart disease resulting from high blood pressure.
So devoted was Edo to his stepfather that he named his son Christopher after him.
Beatrice and the rest of her family attended the funeral, with Nikki eventually becoming engaged for the third time to sculptor David Williams-Ellis.
His stepfather and Nikki’s second husband was Christopher Shale (pictured), a senior Tory and a close friend of former prime minister David Cameron
She used to run a property company and was awarded an MBE by David Cameron as a parting gift following his resignation at Prime Minister in 2016.
His father is former a Olympic Alpine skier, who represented Great Britain at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Japan.
But the count and Edo’s mother divorced when Edo and his sister, Natalia, were very young, and his father later moved to France.
Edoardo is said to enjoy an amicable relationship with his former partner and prides himself on still being an active part of his son’s life.
In August he told the Telegraph: ‘I take [Christopher] to school a couple of mornings a week and finish in time to put him in bed three or four evenings.’
David Cameron is pictured along with Edoardo (second left) and his mother Nikki ahead of a memorial service for her second husband Christopher Shale