Zara’s secret sister’s a mum
Born on the other side of the world, to the lovechild Capt Mark Phillips kept hidden, a cousin for royal rascal Mia. And Dad’s a horseman too!
TO HIS proud mother and father he is a little prince: a fine mop of hair, tiny button nose and two perfect lips pursed in sleep.
His arrival last month delighted first-time parents Felicity and Tristan Wade who, as is the custom these days, published a happy family portrait online, and were duly inundated with good wishes from friends and family. Or most of them, at least. For, adorable as he might be, newborn James Wade can expect little acknowledgement from his impeccably well-connected aunt, Zara Tindall, nor from her brother Peter Phillips. And, sadly, he can expect none at all from his own grandfather, Captain Mark Phillips, the former husband of Princess Anne. It is not even clear he knows that James exists.
For the baby’s birth just a few weeks ago is a reminder of one of the greatest scandals to have rocked the Royal Family – a story not just of illicit sex and illegitimacy, but of a disgraceful attempt to silence a vulnerable woman.
Felicity is Mark Phillips’ lovechild, conceived after a one-night stand with New Zealand art teacher Heather Tonkin in an Auckland hotel room in 1984 while Phillips was still married to the Princess.
This means that Felicity, who has just turned 32, is half-sister to Zara and Peter, the children of Phillips and Princess Anne, and that Felicity’s first-born son James is now a ‘secret’ first cousin to Zara’s threeyear-old daughter Mia.
Today, Zara, 36, is separated by 12,000 miles and a seemingly insurmountable social gulf from this latest addition to her family, who lives with his mother and British father Tristan in New Zealand.
Yet they are connected by genetics, by appearance and even by a shared love of the equine world.
Felicity, herself a keen rider, is a specialist equine vet, and Tristan is an accomplished polo player, who only two years ago was playing in front of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh at Windsor.
Back home in New Zealand, the couple share a ten-acre, £1.5 million property with a string of horses near Felicity’s childhood home, where her mother Heather, now 66, still lives.
Felicity has forged a career with a south Auckland veterinary practice where clients speak highly of her skills and dedication but, despite owning a beautiful property, the couple lead a life with few frills, pouring many of their resources into the horses.
Indeed, horses are at the centre of Felicity’s story, which started in 1983 when her mother Heather took a riding clinic in her home city taught by Captain Phillips, still a leading figure in British equestrianism and an Olympic gold medal winning three-day eventer. The pair struck up a friendship and, when Phillips visited Auckland again the following year, he invited her to his hotel and, she later revealed, left his boots outside his door to guide her to the right room.
She later admitted to having been infatuated with the dashing Army officer. After the hotel tryst, she had gone home and relayed the details to her diary, decorating the page with kisses in the shape of a horseshoe.
But when, a month later, she realised she was pregnant and broke the news on the phone to the Captain, then still very much married to Princess Anne and at home with her at Gatcombe Park, he told her – she later claimed – to have an abortion.
She refused and, eventually, Phil- lips began paying her £6,000 a year through an associate for what his accounts described as ‘equestrian consultancy’. However, when payments became erratic and the Captain refused – gallingly – to be named on his daughter’s birth certificate, Ms Tonkin engaged lawyers and, in 1991, finally spoke in public. The result was a furore.
Phillips and Anne had separated by then but courtiers grew increasingly alarmed at the damaging effect the scandal might have on a monarchy already reeling from stories of marital discord between the Prince of Wales and Diana.
Defending her decision to make the matter public and threaten Phillips with court action, Ms Tonkin said in an interview in 1991: ‘I am doing what I am doing for my child. I hope and pray Mark will do the right thing and make a proper and legally-binding settlement on her.
‘I wish I could wake up one morning in the knowledge that the record had been put straight and I don’t have to worry any more.’
Felicity, known throughout her childhood as Bunny, would also grow up to share her father’s love of horses and with her blonde hair and blue eyes, there were startling similarities between her and Phillips’ other daughter, her half-sister Zara, only four years older.
Ms Tonkin, who was 32 when she fell for Phillips, said at the time: ‘Nothing can compensate for the tears I have cried while trying to plan for Bunny’s future, when at
‘I hope and pray Mark will do the right thing’
any moment I could find myself penniless. Bunny throws her arms around me to comfort me, asking why I am sad. But I have never been able to tell her. My ambition is to get Mark’s public acceptance of her and to be able to enter his name on her birth certificate.
‘She thinks her father is dead. She is entitled to know the truth.’
It was all the more embarrassing for the Royal Family when it emerged that the Captain’s aide had tried to force the child’s mother to keep quiet. Heather Tonkin, after taking advice from her lawyers, taped five phone calls with Phillips’s business agent, during which he dismissed her concerns and threatened to sue her if she tried to put his name on the birth certificate. In one, the agent tells her: ‘If you want to cause a flap, everyone’s just going to deny it.’
He warned her that the ‘clout’ lay with Phillips and added: ‘When this thing hits the fan, your daughter’s life will be ruined.’
Instead of a formal agreement, the agent referred to a ‘gentleman’s agreement’, offering the so-called consultancy fees, an arrangement Heather referred to as ‘hush money’. And even this stalled when Felicity reached school age. Taking the advice of one of Phillips’s aides, Heather had taken the heart-rending step of bringing up Felicity to believe that her father was dead. Only when she was eight years old and conducting a school project on her family history, did Heather feel compelled to tell her daughter the truth.
Realising the lie could not continue, she showed her daughter a biography of Mark Phillips written by newsreader Angela Rippon.
Not that the truth did much to comfort Felicity, who had learned that her father wanted nothing to do with her and would never send her a birthday card or enquire about her health.
A DNA test in 1991 confirmed Phillips as her father, paving the way for a reported £350,000 settlement from Phillips, money which helped pay for fees at one of Auckland’s finest private schools and some profitable property investments to secure Felicity’s future.
It emerged in 1999 that Heather and Felicity had been within 15 yards of the Captain at a three-day event where he was the course designer and they mere spectators. The Captain had appeared oblivious to their presence and, when asked by a journalist if he would meet them, had brusquely replied: ‘Wrong subject.’
Nor has their shared interest in horses bridged the gap between Felicity and her half-sister Zara, a former world champion rider. Zara, the Queen’s granddaughter, has made several trips to New Zealand for work and holiday, yet it is thought that the women have never exchanged a word.
Today, it seems Phillips, now 68, has little intention of being reunited with his daughter in New Zealand, or any inclination to meet his new grandson.
The Mail on Sunday was unable to reach her for comment.
In a new twist, however, Felicity’s own marriage has brought her back within touching distance of the family her birth did so much to rock. For her new son’s father is English expat Tristan ‘Tricky’ Wade, one of three polo playing brothers from Sussex who have long been fixtures on the same fields as William and Harry.
Two years ago, in March 2015, she and Tricky married in Karaka, New Zealand, with no sign of any guests from among her royal relations.
Shortly afterwards, Tricky headed back to Britain and played in a string of tournaments, including the Royal Windsor Cup at the Guards Polo Club, where many of the matches were watched by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh.
It’s unclear whether Tristan had taken his new bride to Britain and if she, too, was among the spectators, cheering her husband on and, through him rather than her father, belatedly earning a place in the ranks of British high society. It is a world in which Tristan moves easily. His polo handicap of three is two above William and Harry, though two behind his elder brother Adrian, a professional player and coach who has represented England many times.
‘There’s nothing fancy about them at all,’ says one local in New Zealand. ‘They drive modest old cars but like a lot of horse people, they live for their animals. People here are very fussy about vets and yet Felicity has a great reputation.’
For all the world it seems that Felicity has ensured that her son will have the sort of childhood she was denied – one in which he is surrounded by the love and attention of an ever-present father.
‘There’s nothing fancy about them at all’