Omid Scobie’s Endgame will be released tomorrow, but some outlets have gotten their hands on sanctioned excerpts or given special advanced access. I was lucky enough to read a copy over the holiday weekend, but I can’t use it as a source yet, which is why I’m going with reporting from other outlets. My “no spoiler” adherence to the NDA means that I’m going to try to give some context for this stuff, like the whole “Meghan named two racist individuals” story and “Meghan wants no part of the soap opera” story. Here are the secondary-source stories:

Meghan’s letters to Charles: Journalist Omid Scobie writes in “Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival” that the Duchess of Sussex wrote private letters to King Charles III, in which she named the two people who took part in those “conversations,” per an advance copy obtained by Page Six.

Prince Harry knows he’s not getting an apology: Scobie quotes the Duke as saying: “I’m ready to forget. Get an apology or explanation? At this point, who cares, right?” But Scobie claims that conversely, the Duchess of Sussex had moved on and would not be extending such olive branches. Meghan, 42, “refuses ‘to dive back into the soap opera’,” he writes in extracts published in Paris Match magazine.

Prince William took down Prince Andrew: He says it was Prince William, 41, who orchestrated the downfall of his uncle, the Duke of York, at the height of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, and who was able to convince his grandmother, Elizabeth II, of punishing her “favourite son”. Meanwhile, the King could not bring himself to hurt his brother. “[He] was in tears because he was afraid for Andrew’s mental health,” Scobie writes. “Charles leads with his head and his heart. William is colder. He wants the job done and he has no problem with casualties along the way.”

[From The Telegraph & Page Six]

What’s crazy about reading the “leaks” and excerpts, having read the book, is how much of this stuff was cherrypicked and left context-free because the British media is still so focused on all things Sussex. The story about Meghan and Charles writing letters to each other after the Oprah interview was a story revealed this year, just weeks before the coronation. What was fascinating is the context for Scobie’s big reveal that Meghan “named” two people – the context being, that Charles’s operation leaks like a sieve and some leaks are designed to punish Charles, not the Sussexes (or the Sussexes are merely collateral damage). But news at seven, Meghan knows exactly who said what and she had no qualms about naming the individuals privately.

As for the stuff about Harry understanding that he won’t get an apology versus Meghan not wanting to be drawn into the soap opera… those are two sides of the same coin. Harry is resigned to the fact that his father cannot and will not navigate tricky interpersonal relationships, and Meghan simply doesn’t want to engage with her in-laws’ nonsense anymore.

The William sections of the book are fascinating though. That’s all I’ll say for now!

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.