Harry and Meghan’s most self-destructive move yet

On the eve of the release of an explosive new royal tell-all, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are once more playing with fire.

The time: June, 2021. The place: London newsrooms. The Nescafé stains: very real.

It was five days after the arrival of Prince Harry and Meghan’s second child, a little girl, and a legal letter from the firm of Schilling, on behalf of the couple, was winging itself around publishers and broadcasters.

The reason: The BBC was reporting that the Sussexes’ had not asked the late Queen’s permission to co-opt her childhood family nickname for their baby.

It’s a scene worth remembering: Less than a week after giving birth, after becoming a family of four, the Sussexes were also instructing their lawyers back in the UK to push back against a claim that they said was “false and defamatory and should not be repeated”.

And the reason we have just taken this brief trip down slightly sour memory lane is because over the weekend a furore has erupted over a new book by Omid Scobie, a biographer who has not so much nailed his colours to the Sussex mast as climbed to the top of the mizzen and decided to wave a colour-coordinated flag with two-hands.

Scobie’s latest book is called Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival and the last 48 hours have seen an Old Faithful-type geyser of revelations erupt forth that paint The Firm in a decidedly noxious light.

Endgame is released tomorrow. Picture: Harper Collins

Royal reporter Omid Scobie.

It’s here we need to play compare and contrast, between June 2021 and today. Between Schillings stationary doing the rounds and, to get some Simon & Garfunkel in here, the sound of silence.

So, a quick rundown of Endgame’s allegations for all you monarchical masochists: That the Firm is on the brink; King Charles labelled Harry a “fool” when the Sussexes’ Netflix series came out last year; Kate, the Princess of Wales and Meghan have had “almost zero communication” since late 2019 and for the princess, “there’s no going back, even in her relationship with Harry”; Prince William ignored Harry’s messages when the late Queen was dying last year, forcing the duke to charter his own plane to Scotland; William is “hot- headed” and is “increasingly comfortable with the Palace’s dirty tricks and the courtiers who dream them up”; and the prince is already in “heir mode” and “knows his father’s reign is only transitional” and therefore is “acting accordingly.”

This fresh slew of claims is about as surprising as Princess Anne adding an industrial-sized can of Taft and a new backcomb to her Christmas list. (The rest? All horse shoes.)

But it’s here we get into the weeds, thus waders on and brave faces, team. The relationship between Scobie and the Sussexes over the last few years has been decidedly complicated. Back in 2020 Scobie and co-author Carolyn Durand released Finding Freedom, which likewise made a cavalcade of damaging claims about Crown Inc and la famille Windsor.

Scobie has denied claims he’s a close friend to Harry and Meghan (pictured). Picture: AFP

At the time, the California couple put out a statement: The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were not interviewed and did not contribute to Finding Freedom. This book is based on the author’s own experiences as members of the royal press corps and their own independent reporting.

Righto, then. Got it.

Except um … oh gee … in November, 2021 Meghan admitted in court to giving personal information to Scobie and Durand and having authorised aides to brief the authors. (She apologised to a London court for having “unintentionally” misled the court in a written statement.)

At the time, the duchess was suing the Mail on Sunday’s parent company ANL for invasion of privacy after they published portions of a letter she had sent her estranged father Thomas Markle. (The duchess prevailed.)

The court case saw a series of emails from Harry and Meghan to their former royal press secretary Jason Knauf made public in the Court of Appeal. In one email, Harry wrote to Knauf of Scobie and Durand’s book: “ … I totally agree that we have to be able to say we didn’t have anything to do with it. Equally, you giving the right context and background to them would help get some truths out there.”

Knauf said in his witness statement: “The book was discussed directly with the Duchess multiple times in person and over email”.

The new book promises to spill more secrets about the Sussex split from the rest of the royal family. Picture: Sascha Schuermann/Getty

What then of the relationship between Harry and Meghan and Scobie these days? (They all now live in California, interestingly.)

In May, Scobie gave evidence in Harry’s court case against the Mirror Group Newspapers, in which the duke has accused MGN of phone hacking. (Scobie had done work experience at MGN in 2002.)

Earlier this month Scobie took to X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, posting of Endgame: “It’s not “Harry and Meghan’s book”, I’m not “Meg’s pal”, the Sussexes have nothing to do with it, their story is a small part of a much bigger one.”

Over the weekend the Times ran an interview with Scboie in which he denied being “on the Sussex payroll” and said, “I have mutual friends with [Meghan], and that definitely helps with getting information and breaking details”.

With this sort of backstory and history, you might expect the Sussexes to speak up at some stage about now, to distance themselves from Scobie’s veritable all-you-can-eat buffet of revelations.

Instead, there has not been a statement or a lawyers’ letter in sight.

One of the unintentional consequences of Harry and Meghan having filed ten lawsuits in two countries in recent years and them having used lawyers to push back against stories, like the Lilibet one in 2021, is that at moments like this, their silence is noteworthy.

Thus far, it does not seem like the Sussexes have any interest in quashing or rebuffing any of Scobie’s claims.

This muteness out of Montecito seems unlikely to go unnoticed.

Meghan and Harry have so far stayed silent about Scobie’s new book.

Only two weeks ago, the story out of London was of a totally different tenor. When King Charles marked his 75th birthday, someone was doing some energetic briefing that His Majesty’s errant son would be placing a call to his dear Pa, a call that we then learnt went so well they were planning a follow-up. (And just like that, the UN stood down their platoon of peacekeeping forces stationed in the Clarence House driveway.)

Then came the Times’ royal editor Roya Nikkhah, with a report in which a friend of the duke and duchess said: “I can’t imagine the Sussexes would decline an invitation to spend time with His Majesty. As of yet, there have not been any invitations for the holidays.”

Except, right when things were marginally looking up for the first time in years came the intercontinental ballistic missile of Endgame.

Even if the Scobie’s best source for this Harry and Meghan parts of this book is only the back-up, on every-second-Tuesday barista at the Starbucks closest to Casa Sussex, at this particular juncture when there are the first tentative signs of trans-Atlantic bridge building, the duke and duchess are still doing and saying nothing.

If the couple is really keen to, one day, nab invitations to royal Christmases, to potentially try and rebuild things with His Majesty especially for the sake of Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, a short statement about Endgame would be the judicious play.

Last year, the duchess gave her first post-Megxit print interview to The Cut and said “Sometimes, as they say, the silent part is still part of the song.”

And today? It really does look like, for the Sussexes, “the silent part is still part of the song.”

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Harry and Meghan’s most self-destructive move yet