Omid Scobie’s new book, Endgame, rips into every member of the royal family — apart from a certain couple in California.
The House of Windsor is crumbling. The King is an unpopular stick-in-the-mud. The Queen is a ruthless operator. The Prince of Wales is a power-hungry schemer. The Princess of Wales is a wet blanket who really didn’t want to appear on Blue Peter. The Duchess of Sussex and her husband? All fine and dandy, with a bright future before them.
So I must ask Omid Scobie, the 42-year-old British author of Endgame, did Meghan contribute to his book at all?
“No, and I’m not her friend,” he says firmly. “I didn’t interview her for this book.”
For those with no scooby about Scobie, he was a jobbing entertainment reporter in London who nobody much had heard of until three years ago, when he and the American journalist Carolyn Durand published Finding Freedom, a breathless account of Megxit. The access Scobie appeared to have had was the envy of many royal correspondents back in Britain.
Initially Meghan claimed she had no involvement with Finding Freedom. Later, in November 2021, while in court taking on the Mail on Sunday for privacy invasion, the duchess admitted that she had provided “briefing notes” for an aide ahead of his meeting with the authors. An unfortunate slip of memory.
Finding Freedom topped the bestseller lists in both America and Britain. In revealing the depth of the divide that developed between William and Harry after Meghan came on the scene, it cemented Scobie in many people’s eyes as Meghan’s cheerleader, crusader and chum. These labels rankle the journalist, who mainly works for Harper’s Bazaar and ABC News. Nevertheless his perceived connection to Meghan has brought him racist abuse, social media pile-ons and death threats. “I’m very aware that I’m quite disliked in Britain. The way anything about me is said is as if I’m just the absolute worst person,” he tells me later. Tears appear in his eyes and I feel genuinely sorry for him.
“I have mutual friends with [Meghan], and that definitely helps with getting information and breaking details,” he says, but, no, he’s not on the Sussex payroll. No, he’s not sleeping on the sofa at their mansion in Montecito. (He’s renting a home in the Hollywood Hills, a long way from his upbringing in Oxford.)
According to his sources in Endgame, H&M (as their staff call them) are “in a good place”. “We have to remember that this is a couple that — this is just my own opinion — seem to have bonded over their shared traumas, experiences and battles that they’ve faced together against others,” Scobie says. “That kind of bond is much tougher to break than anything else.”
The subtitle for Endgame is Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival. Running at nearly 400 pages, the book gives a withering assessment of how close “the Firm” is to collapse, an argument built on Scobie’s opinion and his conversations with former aides, courtiers and friends of those in and around the family on both sides of the Atlantic.
Most readers, though, will be here for the gossip and Machiavellian backstabbing. Scobie does not disappoint on that front. William is a “hot-headed” company man who is “increasingly comfortable with the Palace’s dirty tricks and the courtiers who dream them up”. Scobie claims it is William who, through his loyal aides and press relationships, has painted his younger brother as mentally fragile. “The side of it that a lot of people don’t know, or within our industry have known but chosen not to report, is just how involved William has been in many of the things that have gone out about his own brother,” Scobie claims.
Queen Camilla — now “finally tolerated by the public” — reportedly rolls her eyes when subjects such as gender identity or veganism come up. A former aide is quoted: “Even gluten-free or dairy-free options on a restaurant menu irk her.” Scobie claims, too, that when Piers Morgan called Meghan “Pinocchio Princess” on Twitter/X in 2021 after she had spoken out about feeling suicidal, Camilla “quietly thanked him for defending the Firm”.
Meanwhile the Princess of Wales, who has allegedly “jokily shivered” on mention of Meghan’s name, is portrayed as a woman terrified to do anything more than grinning photo ops. She reportedly had to be gently coaxed into appearing on Blue Peter in 2019. “In the coverage of Kate we infantilise her massively so the bar is always lower,” Scobie tells me from his Hollywood pad. “The small achievements that we’ve seen from the Princess of Wales wouldn’t perhaps be noticed if it was from another member of the royal family, but with Kate it’s like ‘wow!’” Many Windsor-watchers will raise an eyebrow at this depiction, Kate’s public profile having risen sharply since Megxit, and not by accident; her campaigning around formative childhood years has been well received in many quarters. Part of the Waleses’ strategy now, Scobie says, is to take Harry and Meghan on at their own game and focus on winning over the US. More trips, more press.
Then there’s the Duke of York. The day before I speak with Scobie, Prince Andrew’s fashion tycoon friend Peter Nygard is found guilty of four charges of sexual assault. While Harry has been booted out of Frogmore Cottage, Andrew still rattles around Royal Lodge with his ex-wife: “It’s interesting what’s considered the final blow to see you ostracised from the family.” Reports are that Virginia Giuffre, who sued the prince in 2021, alleging that he sexually assaulted her when she was 17, is writing a memoir. “There’s always this lingering threat of more to come out,” Scobie says. Andrew has always denied Giuffre’s allegations.
It’s an interesting time for the family. Harry’s phone-hacking case against the Daily Mail has just been allowed to go to trial; the final series of The Crown is here, including a ghostly turn from Diana; and the King has turned 75. In Scobie’s view, unless the royals rapidly change tack, the whole institution will shortly come skidding off its gilded wheels. “We are at this pivotal moment in time where the future of the royal family as we know it is in a crisis,” he says. “That crisis being a lack of interest from young people, an apathy, a growing republican movement, questions over whether the family still uphold the morals and values of the crown that the Queen did such a great job of. But when you look at the cast of characters … it has been questionable.”
His assessment gets worse. For endless talk of modernisation, Royal Family Inc is as resistant to change as ever. “To stay relevant, the system, in an almost Trumpian twist, leans on patriotism — even jingoism — to shore up its purpose,” he writes. It’s punchy stuff. “Rather than ever facing or confronting challenges of modern times, whether that is diversity or other social issues, the institution of the monarchy regularly turns away from that, and relies on support for things of the past as opposed to widening the following of the royal family,” he says.
Another damaging assertion is the apparently growing chasm between the King and his eldest son, who is in “heir mode”. Prince William, 41, “knows his father’s reign is only transitional,” Scobie writes, “and is acting accordingly.” The pair are out of sync, he says. “It would have been nice to see them come together on certain projects perhaps in the early years, to put on that united front, but they’re all working in silos,” Scobie says, sipping from his bottle of Fiji water. Most other commentators say William and Charles have become closer in recent years, a bond strengthened by Harry’s departure.
The King — “a flawed father and a philandering husband who destroyed the life of Princess Diana” — takes a battering. According to Scobie he demands that his shoelaces are ironed and, more seriously, isn’t relishing the job that he has waited for his entire adult life. “There has been a kind of realisation of what the role is compared to being the Prince of Wales, where there was a little bit more freedom and … personality,” Scobie says. Before Queen Elizabeth II died, palace aides reportedly suggested that Charles didn’t have, in Scobie’s words, “the moxie or the vision for the family’s next chapter”.
His fractured family hardly helps. It was reported that the King invited his youngest son to his 75th birthday celebrations at Clarence House earlier this month but Harry chose to stay away. “It’s perpetuating this notion that everything is hunky-dory,” Scobie says, rolling his eyes. “I remember calling the Sussex rep on the day that [story] came out and they were like, ‘We haven’t even heard a word.’” A few days after we speak it is reported that Charles spoke to Harry and Meghan on the phone on his birthday, breaking a long stalemate.
Endgame includes details of letters said to have been exchanged between Charles and Meghan in the wake of the infamous 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which the duchess said that there were “concerns and conversations” among the royals about the colour of her unborn son’s skin. In the private letters the identities of two people involved were revealed, Scobie writes, but legally he cannot name them. “I don’t know if either [Charles or Meghan] saw completely eye to eye in the end, but there was at least a feeling that both had been heard,” a source told him.
An understanding is said to have been reached that the Sussexes wouldn’t raise this deeply damaging matter again in either their Netflix docuseries, which came out last year, or in Harry’s bestselling memoir, Spare, which was published in January. “The fact that [Charles] engaged in a conversation about it shows a lot more of a willingness to take some of these issues on than Prince William, for example, who has completely avoided talking to his brother whatsoever,” Scobie says.
A painful episode in the book alleges that William ignored Harry’s texts when the family were racing to reach Queen Elizabeth II in Balmoral in her final hours on September 8, 2022. In desperation Harry ended up paying to charter a flight alone from Luton Airport to Aberdeen for £30,000 ($62,000); he found out his grandmother had died when a BBC News alert pinged on his phone. Meghan “could sense she wasn’t wanted”, said a friend, and stayed behind at Frogmore Cottage. At the time of writing the Palace has yet to comment on the book, but royal courtiers were said to be “furious” over the claims.
It was at the Sandringham Christmas family gathering last year that Princess Anne suggested to Charles that he take away Frogmore Cottage from his younger son, according to Scobie. At the same time Prince Edward, sympathetic to his nephew, is said to have been encouraging Charles to speak properly to Harry.
Fast-forward to this year and the chances of a cosy Christmas reconciliation between the brothers at least remain slim. Shortly after the release of Spare, Harry reportedly enlisted a mutual friend to try to orchestrate a conversation with William. It got nowhere. In Endgame Scobie quotes Harry talking to a friend: “I’m ready to move on past it. Whether we get an apology or accountability, who knows? Who really cares at this point?” He also alleges that Kate and her sister-in-law have had “almost zero communication” since late 2019. For Kate, Scobie writes, “there’s no going back, even in her relationship with Harry”.
Meanwhile Meghan sends the King photos of his grandchildren, Archie and Lilibet, four and two. She and Harry also reportedly recorded a video of the children singing Happy Birthday for the King this month.
Scobie grew up in Oxford with his Scottish father, who runs a marketing company, his Iranian mother, who works in child welfare, and his younger brother, and dreamt of becoming a journalist. After leaving Cherwell, a state sixth-form school in Oxford, he studied journalism at London College of Communication. His first job, writing celebrity news at Heat magazine, ended after, he claims, a boss called him a “P***” in emails. He has called it a “toxic workplace”. He moved to the American entertainment magazine Us Weekly and set up its London office. In 2011 he began reporting on the royals, when William and Kate were still Wills and Kate. Before then he had “no personal interest in the royals at all whatsoever”. Then, in 2016, Meghan Markle arrived.
Scobie recalls that, as a mixed-race royal reporter, he gravitated to her relationship with Harry as the most exciting story. “I was going to work my damn hardest to make sure I was close to every single person in their lives, and become someone that, at the very least, people at the palace feel they can come to when they need to correct a story.”
It’s now that he brings up the abuse he receives from anti-Meghan social media trolls, which often focuses on his Iranian heritage. “I’ve really struggled with it, to be honest,” he says. “I definitely felt at times like I wanted to just disappear.”
In a 2020 interview with The Times he knocked six years off his age. “That was unfortunate and naive of me,” he says. “You live and learn.” He does look suspiciously younger than 42. Has he had work done? “Eugh, people are obsessed with this,” Scobie sighs. “I’ve not been under the knife, not done anything crazy.” I raise an eyebrow. He then admits he tried Botox “many years ago” and enjoys Ultherapy, a nonsurgical skin-tightening procedure. He is “hopelessly single” but has his French bulldog, Yoshi, for company.
Scobie gets offers to appear on various reality TV shows, but turns them all down: “I’d become the joke that I think some people already want me to be, or see me as.”
Scobie is the Sussexes’ (unofficial) biographer and is one of their keenest defenders. Earlier this month the Sussexes flew from California to Las Vegas and back by Gulfstream jet for a Katy Perry concert. They were guests of the oil heir Michael Herd. “Here’s the thing with private jets. I mean I obviously don’t fly on them myself.” Hang on, I say, I’ve seen a recent Instagram photo where you look very much as though you’re on a private jet. “OK, that was a private jet, but that was only going from LA to Palm Springs. It was very short.” When I check Instagram again the snap has vanished.
“Meghan has never publicly said a word about the environment, or really attached herself to anything to do with it,” Scobie says. “It’s nice of us to believe that she advocates for the environment, but maybe she doesn’t care and that’s OK too.” (Archewell, the Sussexes’ charitable foundation, made a pledge to become net zero by 2030.)
Pop concerts aside (Perry, Beyoncé x 2, Taylor Swift), the duchess has laid low this year. Endgame suggests that she has been actively avoiding further royal drama — a “significant” reason for skipping Charles’s coronation in May. “It’s now set her up to launch businesses and more creative projects that no one can ever say that she’s … riding on the coat-tails of her royal connections because she has purposely tried to sever them.”
One source in the book says she is working on “something more accessible … something rooted in her love of details, curating, hosting, life’s simple pleasures, and family”. A friend of Meghan’s told Scobie that the former actress is “busy working on creating something safe and timeless”.
“I still don’t quite understand what that business project will be because, as I spoke to people while writing the book, it changed about five times. So we’ll see,” Scobie says. Her priority is apparently “business and philanthropy”, but since Netflix added Suits to its catalogue, the show that launched Meghan’s career has been a hit all over again. Scobie imagines there could be a cameo role for her in the coming spin-off, if she’d ever bite.
What about Harry, who turns 40 next year? “His focus, and this is what I was told by the team, is really building his work in the military space … within the US,” Scobie says vaguely. “There’s a real potential there to grow something really impactful.” There is also his phone-hacking case against the Daily Mail’s publisher to keep him busy. “The feeling for Harry is that he is one of the few people in the world that has the money to take this on. He also feels that having seen everything on the front lines, and during two tours of Afghanistan, that this is a war that’s not that scary,” Scobie says. “He’s also probably, out of any public figure, treated the worst by the British press, so his feeling is that it can’t get any worse.”
Spare, in which the fifth in line to the throne wrote about his frostbitten penis and losing his virginity in a field, “did Harry a lot of good in [the US] because it really reminded people who he was”. It’s not all blue skies in California, though. “The couple has become such a big talking point that they’ve almost become caricatures in the US as well,” he says. “Perhaps there is some apprehension from certain individuals to even consider working with them
What about the rumour being spread by a friend of the royal family that the duke is so miserable that he regularly sleeps in a local hotel? “I know a lot of people that know them, that are in their world, or their space, and I’ve just never come across anything of the sort,” he says, pointing out that the couple have a “massive guesthouse” at their disposal. “If you wanted to spend a night away, you don’t have to go as far as some janky hotel in Montecito town centre.” (“Janky” is the opposite of swanky.) Harry’s British posho social circle back in Britain shrank when Meghan appeared and, Scobie says, “it only continues to get smaller as some of those friends, who were also friends with Prince William, have picked their sides”. He reportedly has a small group of pals in America. “The narrative that this is some friendless loser that now … is all alone and only has his wife to boss him around — it’s make-believe cartoon at this point.”
Before Scobie can scoot off to his personal training session, I want to know if he thinks the royal family will win their “fight for survival”. Could William be our final king?
“It would take a lot to dismantle the British royal family,” he says. “But could William be the last king as we know it? Absolutely.” He believes that the Windsors reduced to tourist attraction is a genuine danger, but that such a fate can be avoided if they kick into gear. “The book isn’t hammering the final nail in the coffin,” he says, smiling. “It’s just a reality check.”
Endgame by Omid Scobie (HarperCollins) is available to buy from today.
Written by: Laura Pullman
© The Times of London
