When Peter Phillips tied the knot with Harriet Sperling on Saturday, one notable absence from the guest list was a close family member—and it wasn’t only Prince Harry who missed out.
Peter’s half-sister, Felicity Wade (formerly Tonkin), was likely far away in her home city of Auckland, New Zealand. Felicity, who is the daughter of Captain Mark Phillips, has reportedly had minimal interaction with the Phillips family. As a child, she believed that her father had passed away, a story perpetuated by her mother on the advice of one of Mark’s assistants until she was eight.
Felicity’s birth was the result of a brief encounter between Captain Phillips and Heather Tonkin, a New Zealand art teacher, in an Auckland hotel in 1984, during his marriage to Princess Anne.
Now married to Tristan Wade, a distinguished British polo player who has previously showcased his talent before the late Queen and Prince Philip at Windsor, Felicity shares a passion for equestrian pursuits similar to her half-sister Zara. She is a renowned equine veterinarian.
The couple has a son named James, believed to be around nine years old. They once resided in a sprawling ten-acre estate valued at £1.5 million, which housed several horses near Felicity’s childhood residence, where her mother, Heather, still lives.
The couple share a son, called James, thought to be around nine years old, and at one point lived in a ten-acre, £1.5million property with a string of horses near Felicity’s childhood home, where her mother Heather lives.
Though Felicity was born just four years apart from Zara, 45, the pair are not believed to have been in contact, nor reportedly has Peter, who in stark contrast, has previously been described by his other half-sibling, Stephanie, as the ‘best big brother out there’.
Stephanie Hosier (née Phillips), 28, the daughter of Captain Phillips and his Hawaiian-born second wife, Sandy Pflueger, is thought to be remarkably close to both Princess Anne’s children.
Unlike Felicity, she attended Harriet and Peter’s ceremony at All Saints Church in Kemble, Gloucestershire – alongside her husband agricultural graduate, William Hosier.
Felicity Wade (née Tonkin), love child of Captain Mark Phillips, pictured in 2011
However, Felicity also wasn’t present at Zara’s nuptials to Mike Tindall in 2011, nor was she seen at Peter’s first wedding to Autumn Kelly in 2008.
Her grandmother, Dr Shirley Tonkin, told the Daily Mail at the time of Zara and Mike’s big day that Felicity would not be attending and wouldn’t even be watching the ceremony on the TV.
She said: ‘Zara has never been in touch with her – nobody has.’ She continued: ‘She’s very happy leading her own life, so I don’t think they’ll be watching – they didn’t even watch William and Kate’s wedding.’
Captain Phillips divorced Princess Anne in 1992 after 19 years of marriage. The couple were wed at Westminster Abbey on November 14, 1973, and an estimated 500 million people watched their ceremony.
Four years later, they welcomed their son, Peter, before the Princess Royal gave birth to their youngest child, Zara.
In 1985, Captain Phillips fathered his love child, Felicity, with New Zealand art teacher, Heather. They met in 1983 when she attended a riding clinic he held in New Zealand.
They met again the following year and spent the night together at his hotel – while he was still married to Princess Anne.
Miss Tonkin has previously said she was ‘infatuated’ with the princess’s husband and her diary entry for that night was filled with kisses formed into the shape of a horseshoe.
Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling depart from their royal wedding at All Saints Church on June 6, 2026 in Kemble
Felicity pictured on her 18th birthday in 2003
Felicity reading a biography of Mark Phillips written by newsreader Angela Rippon in 1994
The following month she discovered she was pregnant but when she rang the captain at his marital home, Gatcombe Park, he reportedly urged her to get an abortion, she claimed. She decided to go it alone and Felicity was born in August 1985.
Later, however, Miss Tonkin decided to seek financial support for her daughter and Captain Phillips secretly paid her £6,000-a-year maintenance for the next five years, which he wrote off as an ‘equestrian consultancy’.
However, when payments became erratic and the Captain apparently refused 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 Charles, then 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 Captain Phillips, said at the time: ‘Nothing can compensate for the tears I have cried while trying to plan for Bunny’s future, when at any moment I could find myself penniless.
Felicity pictured with her mother Heather Tonkin in 1994
‘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.
Ms 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.
Zara Tindall at the wedding of Harriet Sperling to Peter Phillips at All Saints Church in Kemble
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.
The agreement also barred her from ever again publicly associating her name or Felicity’s with Olympic gold medallist Phillips, who has never openly acknowledged his daughter.
‘[Felicity] has really had a lovely middle-class upbringing,’ her grandmother said. ‘She played a lot of sports at school but she loves horses and went to pony club. She had a lot of fun and won the odd ribbon but she doesn’t compete.’
In 1999 it emerged 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.
As a youngster, Felicity ached for some gesture from the Phillips clan – even keeping a book about her father on her bedside table and following her half-sister’s exploits closely via newspapers.
In 2011, knowing Zara’s engagement and marriage would bring attention to her, Felicity reportedly discussed the possibility of speaking publicly about their relationship.
‘I’ve thought about telling my side of the story,’ she confided to a friend. ‘But I’m not sure there’s much point. I don’t want to create bother for them and I like my life quiet. I just like getting on with it.’
Captain Phillips was divorced by the Queen’s daughter after 19 years of marriage in 1992, the year after a DNA test finally confirmed his paternity.
Just a few months later Anne married her second husband Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence.
Captain Phillips would remarry too, to American Olympian dressage rider, Sandy Pflueger, and have a daughter, Stephanie, born in 1997. It was confirmed in 2012 that they had separated.
