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When Zara Phillips marries in less than a fortnight, one of her closest relatives will most definitely not be on the guest list.
\nHer half-sister Felicity Tonkin, love child of Captain Mark Phillips, will remain at home with her mother on the other side of the world.
\nThe two women were born only four years apart and share a passion for horses \u2013 Zara is a world champion three-day eventer while Felicity is a specialist equine vet.
\nBut they have never met despite numerous visits by Zara to New Zealand, where Felicity lives with her mother Heather on a smallholding in Whitford, Auckland.
\nThe Princess Royal\u2019s daughter is already making plans to return for the Rugby World Cup in September, when she will cheer on her new husband, England rugby captain Mike Tindall.
\nDespite all her famed approachability and non-regal manner, however, reaching out to her half-sister has remained strictly off limits.
\n\u2018Zara has never been in touch with her \u2013 nobody has,\u2019 her grandmother Dr Shirley Tonkin told the Mail.
\nCaptain Phillips met Heather Tonkin, an art teacher, 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.
\nMiss Tonkin says she was \u2018infatuated\u2019 with the princess\u2019s husband and her diary entry for that night was filled with kisses formed into the shape of a horseshoe.
\nThe following month she discovered she was pregnant but when she rang the captain at his marital home, Gatcombe Park, he urged her to get an abortion. She decided to go it alone and Felicity was born in August 1985.
\nLater, however, Miss Tonkin decided to seek financial support for her daughter and Captain Phillips secretly paid her maintenance for the next five years, which he wrote off as an \u2018equestrian consultancy\u2019.
\nHe was divorced by the Queen\u2019s daughter after 19 years of marriage in 1992, the year after a DNA test finally confirmed his paternity.
\nMiss Tonkin eventually decided to go public with her story when she read that the captain was in line to receive a substantial financial settlement from the princess, and managed to secure a confidential pay-off.
\nThe agreement also barred her from ever again publicly associating her name or Felicity\u2019s with Olympic gold medallist Phillips, who has never openly acknowledged his daughter.
\nEven when Heather and Felicity passed within 15 yards of the captain at a three-day equestrian event in Auckland in 1999, they made no attempt to bridge the gulf that divides them.
\nAnd he, by then remarried to U.S. millionairess Sandy Pflueger and the father of a third daughter, Stephanie, brusquely dismissed queries about the close encounter, saying merely: \u2018Wrong subject\u2019.
\nThe captain\u2019s cash did, however, enable Miss Tonkin to send her daughter to the Diocesan School for Girls in Epsom, Auckland, where friends say she shone.
\n\u2018She has really had a lovely middle-class upbringing,\u2019 says her grandmother.
\n\u2018She 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\u2019t compete.\u2019
\nAs a youngster, Felicity ached for some gesture from the Phillips clan \u2013 even keeping a book about her father on her bedside table and following her half-sister\u2019s exploits closely via newspapers.
\nBut her grandmother says she is now so focused on her work, and her beloved 60-year-old mother, who has never married, that she is highly unlikely even to follow TV news reports of Zara\u2019s big day.
\n\u2018She\u2019s very happy leading her own life, so I don\u2019t think they\u2019ll be watching \u2013 they didn\u2019t even watch William and Kate\u2019s wedding,\u2019 said Dr Tonkin, a leading authority on cot deaths.
\nIn recent months, knowing Zara\u2019s engagement and marriage would bring attention to her, Felicity discussed the possibility of speaking publicly about their relationship.
\n\u2018I\u2019ve thought about telling my side of the story,\u2019 she confided to a friend. \u2018But I\u2019m not sure there\u2019s much point. I don\u2019t want to create bother for them and I like my life quiet. I just like getting on with it.\u2019<\/p>\n
\nFor More Updates, follow us on The champion and the horse vet: Zara, left, after winning another trophy and Felicity, right, in New Zealand. When Zara Phillips marries in less than a fortnight, one of her closest relatives will most definitely not be on the guest list. Her half-sister Felicity Tonkin, love child of Captain Mark Phillips, will remain at home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[688],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-infotainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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