Princess Beatrice's pregnancy has been making headlines in royal circles since Buckingham Palace announced the happy news on October 1. But while you may be familiar with Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson's firstborn, you may not know much about her husband, Edoardo “Ed” Mapelli Mozzi.

Although he is not of royal birth, the 40-year-old real estate development executive actually has many ties to both the British royal family and the Italian aristocracy. His British-Italian father, Count Alessandro Mapelli Mozzi, was an Olympic skier and grew up in the palatial Villa Mapelli Mozzi in Italy.

Little is known about his father except that Edo's parents are divorced and reportedly live in France. His mother, Nikki Williams-Ellis, remarried to politician Christopher Scherr and raised Eduardo as her own child. In addition to Eduardo and his sister, Natalia Mapelli Mozzi, the couple had a son, Albie Scherr.

Princess Beatrice actually knew her now husband growing up, as Eduardo's family turned out to be close friends with her parents. Both his mother and his late stepfather counted the Yorks as friends, and as reported by Tatler, Beatrice attended Cher's funeral in 2011 with her parents. The couple were so close that the Duchess of York became Albie's godmother.

Albie and Eduardo shared a close bond, and together they founded a charity called “Cricket Builds Hope” to honor Cher's memory, Hello! reports

“Christopher was involved in coaching cricket in Rwanda, and Ed and Albie used to go out there a lot,” David Williams-Ellis, Albie and Edoardo's mother and stepfather, who married in 2017, told the magazine.

The British sculptor said that when Cher passed away suddenly, the siblings “wanted to do something, so they and their mother raised a substantial amount of money and built a cricket ground in Rwanda, which is now a national park.

Before dating Princess Beatrice, Eduardo was in a relationship with architect Dara Hoang, and they have an 8-year-old son, Christopher Wolf “Wolfie” Mapeli Mozzi.

He began dating his current wife in 2018, and in 2019 they made their first public appearance together at the National Portrait Gallery's annual gala.

“When Beatrice first met Edo, she was a teenager. Edo was about 18 or 19 years old and probably had his eyes on the world, which he found rather exciting and glamorous,” her father-in-law told Hello! and added that Edo and Beatrice “formed a bond quite early in life that was reaffirmed when they met again and fell in love.”

Their engagement was announced in 2019, and they married in a secret wedding in 2020, attended only by close relatives due to the pandemic; their first child, a daughter Siena Mapelli Mozzi, was born to them on September 18, 2021.

Professionally, he is a busy entrepreneur with a master's degree in political science from the University of Edinburgh and is CEO and creative director of Banda Properties, an interior design and real estate development company. Eduardo, like his wife, is dyslexic, and the princess, in a 2021 Hello! in 2021.

Beatrice and Eduardo reportedly purchased a historic home in the quaint Cotswolds region of England in 2022, and it appears they will soon have a new nursery. According to Buckingham Palace, the couple plans to welcome their second child “in early spring.”