In Piers Morgan’s Sun column this week, he suggested that the Windsors should murder Prince Harry. Piers also denied speaking on the phone to Queen Camilla, and he brought up, out of nowhere, grifter dumbass Samantha Markle. Piers wrote: “So, on balance, I think I’ll wait for Meghan’s next appearance under oath – which may come quite soon in her legal battle with her half-sister Samantha – before believing her latest denials of any involvement, direct or otherwise, in this latest book.” First of all, it’s not against the law to give interviews to a biographer. Second of all, that name-check reminded me of my long-held conspiracy theory, which is that Piers is the scriptwriter and financier of the White Markles’ theatrics. Thomas and Samantha both perform scripts written by Piers, and Piers is seemingly showing his hand here – he could be the one financing Samantha’s nuisance lawsuit against Meghan.

As for the lawsuit, it’s still the same dumbf–kery. Samantha is suing Meghan for “defamation” because Meghan said she grew up as an only child, and Meghan also said she barely knew her half-sister. Samantha, meanwhile, has spent years giving paid interviews where she trashes Meghan. Now she claims that Meghan hurt her financially. That’s it, that’s the lawsuit. The first lawsuit was laughed out of court, but Samantha refiled and here we are. The judge set a date for the “trial.”

Samantha Markle looks likely will get her day in court after a judge set a trial date in her defamation lawsuit against half-sister Meghan Markle. The trial will begin in Tampa on November 4, 2024, a judge ruled this month. It is expected to last up to five days. She is seeking $75,000 in damages.

Samantha, 59, who has long been estranged from the Duchess of Sussex, alleges that she was defamed during the infamous Prince Harry and Meghan interview with Oprah Winfrey that aired in 2021. In March, a judge in Florida threw out the suit saying that Meghan’s claims would be impossible to disprove but following amendments, the same judge appears to have ruled that there is merit to the claims.

During the interview, Meghan, 42, made references to growing up as an only child, something which Samantha resented, alleging that she had a normal sibling relationship with her younger half-sister.

[From The Daily Mail]

$75K. That’s all she wants. One, that shows that she’s desperate for Meghan to settle or just throw money at her to go away. Two, if Meghan doesn’t pay up, Samantha’s aim is just to be a thorn in Meghan’s side for as long as possible, to “punish” Meghan for not giving a sh-t about her grifter ass. It’s sort of astounding to really think about how Samantha and Thomas both sold out Meghan for relative paltry amounts of money. They weren’t even smart enough to figure out how to really “profit” from their connections to Meg. Anyway, this woman is a lunatic and I hope the court throws this bullsh-t out again before the trial date.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

For years, for decades really, the Windsors and the British media have been in lockstep in their cruelty, if not outright sadism. The torment they put Diana through, the torment they put Meghan through, it’s all baked into the system. The institution gleefully partnered with the media to destroy Meghan before our eyes, then the same institution tries to gaslight us into believing that we didn’t really see that they were laughing as they called Meghan a sociopath and a degree wife as she grappled with suicidal ideation. Well, here’s something even funnier: apparently Omid Scobie’s mild criticism of Princess Kate’s part-time busywork is a bridge too far. It is unspeakably malicious (!!) to even mention the fact that Kate does f–k all. Rebecca English was tasked with writing a messy Mail piece about how the palace is “reeling” from Scobie’s “vitriol.” The poor, innocent palace, who never did anything wrong! The Windsors are cloaked in purity and positivity, you guys.

Becky’s hot take: “Perhaps [Scobie] should have paid more attention to the better-known saying: ‘If you haven’t got anything nice to say, say nothing at all.’ For that, in a nutshell, is the fatal failing of his vitriolic new royal tome, Endgame, the sheer malice of which has left Palace staff reeling.

Toxic nastiness! “Even the most ardent royalist accepts that we are no longer living in an age of unquestioning reverence. The monarchy must prove its worth and relevance every day. But the toxic nastiness of Scobie’s book, the oozing bile that seeps from almost every sentence and the pantomime nature of its supposed villains (from King Charles and Queen Camilla, to the Prince and Princess of Wales, their staff – and even me!) leaves readers feeling quite grubby with the utter spitefulness of it all.

The palace is shocked!! “The shock in palace circles this week, as the true nature of the book began to emerge, has been palpable. They were expecting a hatchet job, of course, given the author’s well-known sympathies, but not one as viciously and aggressively one-sided as this. ‘I think everyone is shocked at the malice and the deliberate cruelty of what he has written, not to mention the misogyny of much of what he says,’ a source tells me. ‘That’s particularly breathtaking from someone who also makes such an effort to tell us what a high-minded person he is, operating above what he depicts as the incestuous fray of run-of-the-mill royal reporting.’

Is this misogyny?? Among the claims of misogyny Scobie has faced is that the Princess of Wales is ‘technically a part-time working royal’ because of her determination to also be a hands-on mum and describing her rather patronisingly as the monarchy’s ‘last shiny thing for many years to come’.

[From The Daily Mail]

A palace source also claimed that Endgame is “littered with errors.” While I saw one or two errors (wrong months/dates), the truth is, if the book was littered with errors, that would be the main line of attack from the palace – they would be fact-checking like a motherf–ker, running to the Mail with their receipts of “no, it happened this way, here’s the proof!” The Mail would happily carry their water too. Instead, the palace is assuming an air of unearned grievance, like Endgame isn’t a detailed and well-researched tome of their cruelty, their poor management, their blind privilege, their racism, their bigotry, their inability to problem-solve their way out of a wet paper bag. Apparently, it’s “misogyny” to mildly criticize Kate’s nonexistent work ethic too. But it’s not misogynistic for Queen Camilla to have lunch with a man who wrote about wanting to strip Meghan naked and throw excrement at her.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

Hannah Waddingham looks so strange here. The aggressive bronzer isn’t helping, but the dress kind of sucks too. [GFY]
60 years later, do you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK? [Pajiba]
Regular people describe their own real-life unsolved mysteries. [Buzzfeed]
Colman Domingo talks about all that Euphoria drama. [Socialite Life]
Charles Melton is a heartthrob we can all get behind. [LaineyGossip]
Luke Evans lost 17 pounds in 10 weeks. [JustJared]
Tilda Swinton wore Chanel in Marrakech. [Tom & Lorenzo]
Justin Timberlake & Jessica Biel were out & about in LA. [Hollywood Life]
Sob, I wish there was a Krispy Kreme near my house. [Seriously OMG]
Montgomery Riverboat brawlers are doing merch! [The Root]

When Princess Diana passed away, she left her personal jewelry collection to her sons, to be divided up between Harry and William however they saw fit. Most of the pieces worn by Kate are either Royal Collection pieces strongly associated with Diana, or some of the bigger sapphire pieces Diana received to “match” her engagement ring. Between the Duchess of Sussex and Princess of Wales, we’ve seen a lot of Diana’s pieces, and I honestly think Meghan got the better end of it – she got the aquamarine “freedom ring,” some of Diana’s smaller (and most beloved) casual pieces (simple earrings and bracelets), and Diana’s Cartier watch. Beyond the jewelry connections, both of Diana’s daughters-in-law have done some homages to Diana. Personally, I think there’s a distinction between “an homage/reference to Diana” versus “Diana cosplay.” Meghan will sometimes reference Diana’s style but she has never (to my knowledge) fully cosplayed Diana like Kate has done frequently, for years and years. Well, Omid Scobie’s Endgame includes some information about how palace staff *encouraged* that cosplay.

The Princess of Wales and Meghan Markle have both been encouraged to dress like Diana so a bit of her ‘shine could rub off on them’, according to a new book. Omid Scobie, who has long been closely associated with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, claims in his new book about the royal family that the pair were urged to essentially ‘cosplay’ as their husbands’ mother-in-law.

The Sussexes’ biographer writes that Kate, 41, and Meghan, 42, would sometimes be given outfits based on ideas which used photos of the late Princess of Wales for inspiration. The 42-year-old quotes a royal source as saying that William, 41, and Harry, 39, were consulted anytime it was suggested that their wives be dressed in a style similar to their late mother.

In [Endgame], Scobie writes that Kate and Meghan both wear jewellery that once belonged to their late mother-in-law, adding that a ‘huge amount of effort’ is put into ‘channelling her exact look’ and this is ‘sometimes beyond the pale’.

He adds: ‘During the past thirteen years, Diana cosplay has become a royal staple… Were there gentle pushes from others? At times, yes. It had been known for someone to go back and pull images of Diana at a certain place or time for ideas. At the right moment this can be a sweet gesture, but there is also a slightly queasy feeling when you realise it’s often orchestrated within the same system that contributed to her living misery, and an institution that still wants some of Diana’s shine to rub off on them.’

[From The Daily Mail]

It would not surprise me if “It had been known for someone to go back and pull images of Diana at a certain place or time for ideas” is only true about Kate and not Meghan. When Meghan lived in the UK, those same staffers were terrified that Meghan had Diana-like potential to overshadow everyone else. The last thing they wanted to do was draw a direct visual comparison between Diana and Meghan. But I’m saying that as someone who has found Kate’s Diana cosplay to be extremely creepy for a long time. At least we know that it wasn’t Kate alone, creating her Diana lookbooks and Meghan lookbooks. It’s a group effort within the palace to somehow try to create a personality for Kate by dressing her up like a Diana or Meghan doll.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar.

In March 2019, The Sun published Dan Wootton’s infamous “rural rival” story, about then-Duchess Kate trying to “phase out” her rural rival Rose Hanbury, the Marchioness of Cholomondeley. The first story was carefully worded, leaving just enough space to allow people to insinuate that the beef between Rose and Kate was about a rumored/alleged affair between William and Rose. The follow-up reporting spelled it out, although that report of “private dinners” between William and Kate was soon wiped from the internet. Tom Parker Bowles’ BFF Giles Coren even tweeted out a confirmation about the affair, and by April, Kensington Palace had sent out legal warnings to most British papers, all in a desperate attempt to contain the story. I still believe that Prince Harry’s story, in Spare, about William’s temper tantrum in April of that year, was all about the Rose story (and William blamed Camilla for the story leaking out).

Well, Omid Scobie covers the Rose Hanbury rumors in Endgame. He doesn’t have confirmation of an affair either way, but he does say that the British media was abuzz with insider details and Kensington Palace was fully panicking. He also spells out the “deal” William’s office apparently worked out – to blatantly bury the affair story, William sold out Harry and Meghan at every turn.

Unsubstantiated rumours about the Prince and Princess of Wales’ marriage erupted online – prompting a ‘furious’ Prince William to resolutely deny them.

The gossip started when a story broke in 2019 claiming that Kate had had a ‘terrible falling out’ with friend and neighbour, Rose Hanbury, the Marchioness of Cholmondeley. “They used to be close, but that is not the case anymore,” the report read according to an explosive new book by royal writer Omid Scobie. Kate, it was claimed, had apparently instructed William to ‘phase her out’.

According to the book, reports alleged that Rose had ‘one or two suppers with William in Norfolk while Kate was away’ – but purely as ‘platonic friends’. “But it was hardly as if they were meeting behind Kate’s back – of course she knew they were getting together. And Kate was grateful that a good friend and neighbour like Rose was there to entertain William.”

Rival reports hit back, insisting that the fall-out talk was false and merely ‘aristocratic dinner party gossip’, and that William actually ‘bears all the hallmarks of a contented man,’ thanks to his marriage.

Scobie makes it clear that there was never any evidence found to back up the wild allegations, and Christian Jones, head of communications at Kensington Palace, asked William if they were true – and was met with short shrift.

“William, he said, was furious when the question came up and vehemently said it was not true,” Scobie writes. For Kate’s part, although she is said to have been ‘uncomfortable’ with the talk, she ignored it. However, a friend of the Prince of Wales is quoted as telling the author: “Dealing with nasty, untrue rumours… wouldn’t you be filled with rage? It’s been very difficult for him, and for Kate. But I truly believe these things make you stronger.”

[From The Daily Mirror]

What Scobie did in this section was really interesting – he basically just re-reported everything which had been buried and erased from the online archives, added some new information about Christian Jones’s panic (Jones was William’s press secretary at the time) and then put the whole thing in the larger framework of William blatantly throwing the Sussexes under the bus, all to save his own ass. Anyway, I’ve always believed that Rose was the one who leaked the initial story, and I also believe that there were widespread rumors about the affair in aristo circles. I think Rose was putting Kate in her place more than anything else, although it would not surprise me at all if Camilla was also behind some of it.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Almost one year ago, Jeremy Clarkson wrote a violent screed against the Duchess of Sussex, openly fantasizing (in a Sun column) about stripping Meghan naked, parading her down the streets and throwing excrement at her. Clarkson wrote that column just a few days after enjoying a pre-Christmas lunch with Queen Camilla and some of her favorite right-wing media figures. Well, it looks like Queen Camilla has sent another one of her favorite attack dogs after her enemies. This time it’s Piers Morgan writing a column for the Sun, a column devoted to deriding the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and Omid Scobie. Piers denies Scobie’s story about Camilla contacting him and thanking him after his grotesque comments about Meghan in 2021, but the main thrust is that Piers was actually “authorized” to make deadly threats against Scobie and the Sussexes.

Piers’ denial about chats with Camilla: In the book, Scobie states as fact that Queen Camilla and I ‘enjoy regular chats on the phone.’ But the truth is I’ve never had a single phone conversation with Her Majesty in my entire life. He also says that ‘When Piers called the Duchess of Sussex “Pinocchio Princess” and then a “race-baiter” on Good Morning Britain… it was Ca­milla who quietly thanked him for defending the Firm.’ This, again, is a lie. I had no contact with Queen Camilla in that period whatsoever. I did with some other members of the Royal Family, as I said at the time, but not Camilla. Scobie just read what I said, and wrongly guessed it was Camilla.

The royal racists named in letters between Meghan & Charles: For example, he includes specific details of letters exchanged between Charles and Meghan after the Oprah Winfrey whine-a-thon in which she claimed there were ‘concerns and conversations’ with members of the Royal Family about the colour of her unborn son’s skin. Scobie says the letters name the two royals involved who supposedly expressed their ‘concerns’ but writes that he cannot name them legally. If those names are who I think they are, again based on my own very good sources, I find it impossible to believe either of them would have ever expressed any racially- motivated ‘concerns’ about the skin colour of Meghan and Harry’s baby.

Scobie could name the racists: But whilst Scobie would run into legal problems in the UK if he named them here, there’s nothing to stop him revealing the names in America where he would be protected by the First Amendment covering free speech. The reason he won’t is because he knows he’d ignite a firestorm of fury, and almost certainly provoke the royals concerned into publicly denouncing these wicked racist slurs for which Meghan’s never produced a shred of evidence.

I’ve always believed that Piers is involved with Thomas & Samantha Markle: “So, on balance, I think I’ll wait for Meghan’s next appearance under oath – which may come quite soon in her legal battle with her half-sister Samantha – before believing her latest denials of any involvement, direct or otherwise, in this latest book.”

The death threat: All while we’re supposed to believe Meghan and Harry are keen to build bridges with the royals and even want to spend Christmas with them at Sandringham, which seems about as likely as me being invited up there to pull a festive cracker. I can’t speak for Charles, Camilla, William, or Kate, but if two close members of my family had spent the past few years trashing the rest of us on global media platforms, the only way I’d want to spend Christmas with them is if they were human chestnuts roasting on my open fire. Harry would do well to heed the warning of Dionysius the Tyrant who was left a broken man by his constant warmongering and got finally bumped off by his own fed-up family.

[From The Sun]

“The truth is I’ve never had a single phone conversation with Her Majesty in my entire life” – carefully worded, because they have lunch together and I’m sure he’s been invited to the palace for hatchet-face-to-hatchet-face briefings. It’s possible that Scobie got the detail about Camilla “calling” Piers wrong, and it’s also possible that Piers is just lying. Perhaps Camilla sent him a note of thanks or she used an intermediary (which would be her style). As for the death threat… given what happened in New York this year, I think the family has already tried to “bump off” the Sussexes. That’s also why they’re so hellbent on “getting Harry to come back” or isolating him at Balmoral.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Piers’ social media.

While there are many unsettling stories and details in Omid Scobie’s Endgame, there are several parts which are laugh-out-loud funny. The entirety of Chapter 2 is a hoot – it details the fall/winter of discontent in Windsor-ville following QEII’s passing, with screw-up after screw-up involving a king, queen and heir who could not stop tripping over their d–ks at every opportunity. But one of the funniest parts was Scobie casually ending the Duchess of Edinburgh in the length of two paragraphs. Scobie referenced the now-infamous interview Sophie and Edward gave to Camilla Tominey at the Telegraph a couple of months after the Sussexes’ Oprah interview. When the Telegraph reporter pressed them to comment on the interview, Edward said “Oprah who?” and Sophie chimed in with “Yes, what interview?… You know, if you’re not into chat shows, there’s no reason why you should know who she is. Certainly not in this country, anyway.” Here’s what Scobie wrote about that and the Wessexes/Edinburghs:

Omid Scobie has claimed that ‘the comments about the world’s most successful black woman and one of the biggest faces in entertainment made them seem stuffy or tin-eared at best, and casually bigoted at worst. What may seem like a trivial episode by itself, Sophie’s Oprah gaffe is yet another page to add to the history of recent screw ups.’

The Royal author argued that Sophie and Edward’s remarks could also be used as evidence to support the notion that the British monarchy is an “intolerant organisation steeped in bigotry and privilege”.

He went on to claim that Sophie also ‘noticeably’ appeared to ignore Meghan outside Westminster Abbey at the late Queen Elizabeth II’s state funeral, as did Kate Middleton and Queen Camilla. According to Scobie, Meghan had to endure ‘snubs and brush-offs’ during her and Prince Harry’s stay, as well as ‘the same old power trips’.

He further claimed that Sophie and Edward very rarely get any press, with their 2023 trip only featuring in the Cayman Compass and Cayman News Service. During a conversation with a ‘top Fleet Street Editor’ about Sophie and Edward, Scobie says he was told: “I’d have more luck putting my mum on the front page.” Other claims revolved around Sophie and Edward’s March 2022 trip to Antigua, during which they apparently ‘smiled’ and ‘waved’ to audiences who were ‘demanding apologies and reparatory justice’ for Britain’s colonial past in the Caribbean.

[From The Daily Mail & The Mirror]

The Oprah Who episode truly did not get enough attention at the time, likely because Sophie and Edward are so utterly unmemorable, uncharismatic and un-noteworthy. But that whole passage from the 2021 interview was truly awful. Sophie really thought she could look down her nose at one of the most famous Black women in the world, the world’s first Black woman billionaire, etc. Sophie who? Also, “I’d have more luck putting my mum on the front page” is so savage. I’m still chuckling.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar and Cover Images.

In Endgame, Omid Scobie devotes one chapter in two parts to Queen Camilla and the current Princess of Wales. The side-by-side is because these are the only two married-in women who figured out a way to survive the institution – Camilla has survived by keeping the tabloids by her side, and Kate has survived by being as docile and personality-free as possible. While y’all know my feelings on Kate, I will give her begrudging credit for that one thing: she has found a way to survive and balance herself within everyone’s competing agendas. After twelve years of marriage, she’s become such an institutional creature that even the most mild criticisms of her are seen as the most heinous of attacks. Which is where we are now – Scobie actually went pretty easy on Kate, considering the rest of the book, which is why it’s so interesting to see this outsized focus on Scobie’s “scathing attacks” on poor Keen. Some highlights from various British media coverage:

Katie Keen: Kate is said to have earned the nickname “Katie Keen,” according to the author of Finding Freedom, because the palace press office hides her reportedly lower workload by saying she is “keen to learn”. Scobie and claimed the late Queen liked her because she was ‘coachable’ unlike the ‘strong-minded’ Princess Diana. Scobie added that Kate ‘glides under the radar’ because she’s ‘never challenged the system with public struggles or oversized aspirations’. He adds she is ‘comfortable in her role’ and ‘willing to bring the requisite smile and elegance to her duties as princess’.

Kate ignored Meghan: Scobie claims another source told him Kate ‘spent more time talking about Meghan than to her’…He added that Kate ‘watched on in silence’ as stories were published about Meghan making her cry, and that she now ‘shivers’ when her name is brought up. ‘This is a side of Kate that rarely gets written about. Advocating for mental health causes—the mental health of mothers, for that matter—but ignoring her own sister-in-law’s cries for help seemed out of character for someone the public knew as sweet and easy to get along with…At the very least the institution ignored Meghan when she was in pain. It’s a dismal record, and with William now openly claiming his mother was essentially too paranoid to speak the truth, it proves the institution still operates under the principle that women not born into the family are, ultimately, disposable.’

Part-time royal: Scobie writes “The late Queen, too, would take off blocks of time throughout the year to recharge, but she was also known to carry out at least three hundred engagements annually. Sources said Kate remains ‘laser focused’ on her duty to the family first, and then the Crown. Where other senior royals are out and about several times a week, meeting people across the length and breadth of the country, Kate has long maintained a smaller work schedule that helped her check off the required royal boxes while saving time for her roles as a mother and a wife.” The new book also claims she “does not plan to increase her workload for 10-15 years” until her children are grown.

Kate & Meghan: While Scobie says the sisters-in-law had “nothing in common” they “could have made things work in those early days if there was peace between the warring Windsor siblings”. Meghan is said to have found her time in the royal household as being “lonely and isolated” and had hoped Kate would be someone she could turn to for a kind word, as they “were once both outsiders, middle-class women brought into the House of Windsor for unimaginably different lives”. But Kate, so Scobie claims, was “uninterested in forming this kind of bond” because “she can be cold if she doesn’t like someone” and “wasn’t a fan of Meghan”.

[From The Sun & The Daily Mail]

There are several royalists being sent out to snort derisively in Scobie’s direction, but it’s curious that no one is mentioning the book’s discussions about how Kate and William have always gone MIA for months at a time, how Kate blatantly began copying Meghan two seconds after H&M got engaged, and how a former staffer even admitted that Meghan’s arrival was like a rocket up the ass for Kate, and that’s why there was all of this Single-White-Female-ing. While all of that – and Kate’s lack of empathy for Meghan – makes it hard to feel sorry for Kate, I do think it’s interesting that this supposedly modern Millennial woman is able to largely glide around with no personality, no causes, no passions. All with that budget wig on her head. Also: it’s so funny to me that Kate is going to put off full-time royal work until all of her kids are in their twenties.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar and Backgrid.

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In January 2023, Paris Hilton made headlines for welcoming a baby boy named Phoenix Barron via surrogacy. Paris had kept the pregnancy a secret from everyone, including her family. Well, from everyone except her producers and camera crew, of course. Little Phoenix’s debut and introduction to his maternal family will be featured prominently in season 2 of Peacock’s Paris in Love. On Thanksgiving, Paris revealed that she had done it again. This time, she and husband Carter Reum welcomed Paris’ long-awaited baby girl, named London.

On Thursday, Paris, who is already mom to a little boy named Phoenix, shared a series of heartwarming social media posts announcing the birth of her second baby with husband Carter Reum. In one of her TikTok videos, Paris can be heard asking her young family members, “You guys excited for your new cousin?” before telling them, “I have two babies.”

The comments were immediately flooded with congratulatory messages from fans, one of which read, “OMG ANOTHER BABY!!!! A GIRL SO HAPPY FOR YOU!!!!”

Paris quickly entered the conversation herself, replying to the above comment, “My princess has arrived!”

In another two videos, Paris wrote that she was celebrating Phoenix being a “big brother.” She and Carter welcomed the little boy via surrogate earlier this year in January, and prior to his birth, she’d been super open about her “tough” IVF experience.

Meanwhile, over on Instagram, Paris announced the name and sex of her new child by sharing a sweet photo of a pink baby outfit with the word “London” printed across. “Thankful for my baby girl,” she wrote in the caption.

[From Buzzfeed]

Honestly, I don’t hate it when people do “themed” names for their children, so I think it’s cute that she stuck with the city theme and named her daughter London. It’s a pretty name, too. Paris has been telling people for years that London was her “girl name” if she ever had a daughter. In an interview last year, she said that her future daughter’s name would be “London Marilyn Hilton Reum.” Marilyn is her paternal grandmother’s name, the wife of Barron, who inspired Phoenix’s middle name. Both of my children have middle names that honor a grandfather on each side, so I’m also a sucker for family names. I wonder what city-themed names Paris will use in the future. Vienna? Milan? Dallas? Aaaand I’ll stop myself there before I go down a rabbit hole. Congrats to Paris on finally getting her little girl named London. I’m looking forward to the many awkward Instagram poses to come.

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A few weeks ago, when People Magazine published the first excerpts from Omid Scobie’s Endgame, there were grumbles from both the Sussex Squad and the royalists. I wrote about it here, expressing my hope that Endgame would be a larger, coherent narrative about “the palace leaks and briefings, the poor management and decision-making within the establishment, the clownshow of it all, the fact that the ashy royals are struggling and unpopular, all of which has been thrown into sharp relief within the past four years of the Sussexit.” Having read/skimmed Endgame, I can safely say that the book is exactly what I expected and more.

What I’ve learned from covering royal gossip for years is that those of us following the daily gossip should never underestimate the fact that the overwhelming majority of casual royal-watchers are only really paying attention to the bigger headlines. It was the same with Finding Freedom – many of us die-hard Sussex people knew those stories, but the book was so successful because casual watchers began to pay attention, or they simply appreciated that at least one book was positive/neutral about the Sussexes. Same with the Duke and Duchess of Sussexes’ Netflix docuseries – while there was new information, the bulk of it was already known, but it was just repackaged in their own words. That too was a massive success, as was Harry’s memoir. What I’m saying is that Endgame will become one of those big headlines, it will be one of those bigger stories which casual fans/supporters will pick up and absorb. And that’s a good thing, because even I was surprised by some of the details and stories Scobie wrote about.

Some areas of royal coverage we’ll get into in the next few days and weeks – Scobie writes, in detail, about the alleged affair between Rose Hanbury and Prince William, but he does so through the prism of the media and Kensington Palace’s extremely ham-fisted attempts at damage control, which leads into a larger story about William’s then-press secretary Christian Jones and Dan Wootton. Scobie also has a wealth of details about William’s 2019 Flybe stunt, William’s coldness and rage, the antagonism between Charles and William’s royal courts and Charles’s refusal to simply sit down with Harry and have a real conversation.

As much sh-t as Scobie gets for being “the Sussexes’ cheerleader” or “the Sussexes’ de facto spokesperson,” Scobie knew he had to build his own story within Endgame, and he explains, in detail, how few times he’s actually met or spoken to Meghan, his conversations with some of the Sussexes’ staff, and what happened when Finding Freedom’s sourcing was brought into question during Meghan’s lawsuit against the Mail. He also explains, throughout the book, his legwork as a reporter. So much so that I found myself asking why the hell no one else in the royal rota even thought to do the same kind of source-maintenance or basic journalism. The other royal reporters seem equally stuck in a broken system, stenographers to an ever-weakened royal court. It’s shocking to me that none of them have figured out what Scobie sussed out years ago: there’s an untapped market for honest coverage of the monarchy’s death rattle.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.