HRH The Countess of Wessex

Sophie
Countess of Wessex (more)
The Countess at the wedding of Princess Madeleine of Sweden and Christopher O'Neill in Stockholm, June 2013
Born	(1965-01-20) 20 January 1965 (age 52) Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, England
Spouse	Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex (m. 1999)
Issue	Lady Louise Windsor James, Viscount Severn
Full name Sophie Helen
House	Windsor (by marriage)
Father	Christopher Rhys-Jones
Mother	Mary O'Sullivan

Sophie, Countess of Wessex, GCVO (Sophie Helen; née Rhys-Jones; born 20 January 1965), is the wife of Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, the youngest son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Married in 1999, she worked in public relations until 2002 and now assists her husband in his various activities. The Earl and Countess have two children: James, Viscount Severn, and Lady Louise Windsor, who are respectively tenth and eleventh in line to the British throne.

Sophie Helen Rhys-Jones was born at Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, on 20 January 1965, the second child and first daughter of Christopher Bournes Rhys-Jones (born 1931), a retired tyre salesman, and his wife, Mary (née O'Sullivan; 1934–2005), a secretary. She has an elder brother, David, and was named after her father's sister, Helen, who died in a riding accident in 1960. Her godfather, actor Thane Bettany, is her father's stepbrother; both men spent their early life in Sarawak, North Borneo, then a British Protectorate ruled by the White Rajahs.

Sophie was raised in a four-bedroom 17th-century farmhouse in Brenchley, Kent. She began her education at Dulwich Preparatory School, before moving on to Kent College, Pembury, where she was friends with Sarah Sienesi, with whom she subsequently shared a flat in Fulham and who later became her lady-in-waiting. She then trained as a secretary at West Kent College, Tonbridge.