One word signals new Prince Harry and Meghan Markle fight

A new “penetrating investigation” will look “inside the royal family’s fight for survival” – and King Charles should be very worried.

COMMENT

Meme, meet monarchy. Monarchy, meet meme. Remember back in 2020, when we were dog-paddling to keep our heads above the waterline of existential dread and bulk ordering elasticised trousers, there was that ‘How it started … how it’s going’ trend?

If anyone at Buckingham Palace fancied taking a break from drinking cups of tea and finding new ways to issue non-apologies to former colonial vassal states, then it might be worth giving the meme a whirl regarding King Charles and his family.

For ‘How it started’ we could use the photo taken for His Majesty’s 70th birthday in 2018, which saw the King, wife Queen Camilla and his sons and daughter-in-law, William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales (and their kidlets) and Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex do some polite posing in a garden.

How it started … Picture: Chris Jackson / Clarence House via Getty Images

Then, for the ‘how’s it going’ part, next week, Charles will mark his 75th birthday, let’s imagine what that same family portrait would look like now: William and Harry would be yanking each other’s ears and throwing around words ‘knob head’; Kate would be tossing a half-used tube of lip balm on the manicured lawn muttering ‘take the damn stuff’; hard American ‘R’s’ would meet cut-glass English vowels; someone would be talking very loudly about ‘my truth’ and Princes George, Louis and Archie and Princesses Charlotte and Lilibet would all be standing there looking blankly at one another because the cousins have no relationship whatsoever.

So, ‘how’s it going’ in 2023 for the King and his wayward son, off acquiring a Californian twang and a taste for almond milk? Badly.

How it’s going. Picture: Phil Harris / POOL / AFP

And it could be about to get much worse.

The reason – a book – an object that has traditionally not figured highly in reasons that monarchs have mused about whether they should reopen a wing of the Tower specifically for relatives.

Later this month will see ardent Sussex cheerleader Omid Scobie put out Endgame, a follow-up to 2020’s Finding Freedom, a release that forced the journalists the world over to press the word ‘hagiographic’ back into regular service. (Weirdly Endgame, at the time of writing, was sitting at the top of Amazon Australia’s bestseller list for … practical politics. Que?)

Anyone with a vested interest in Crown Inc or Charles’ blood pressure best sit down because Endgame looks set to take aim at Buckingham Palace.

The one-word title promises it will be a “penetrating investigation” and will take readers “inside the royal family and the monarchy’s fight for survival,” making it sound like the receivers might be coming in any day now to start stripping out the Vermeers.

The blurb is a real eye popper: “An unpopular king, a power-hungry heir to the throne, [and] a queen willing to go to dangerous lengths to preserve her image.” But don’t worry! There’s a brave hero in the mix too specifically, “a prince forced to start a new life after being betrayed by his own family.” (Whoever could that and his bespoke Garrard worry beads be?)

Finding Freedom Author Omid Scobie. Picture: Supplied

His latest book Endgame promises a “penetrating investigation”.

Some of the book’s chapter titles include “Shaky Ground: The Queen is Dead, the Monarchy Faces Trouble”, “ ‘Oh God, I Hate This’: King Charles’s Premiere” and “Gloves On: Prince William, Heir to the Throne”. (The dog bowl will live to see another retelling methinks!)

However, the most potentially damaging one is clear – the chapter entitled “Race and the Royals: Institutional Bigotry and Denial”.

And it’s here where you need to imagine courtiers’ neatly rolling up starched sleeves and getting into the Rocky fighting stance. Reportedly, they will not be taking a fresh round of claims on this specific front in the politely supine position. Rather, the Daily Mail has claimed that while “Palace aides have said they are unlikely to comment on the book” however “any charges of racism will be ‘robustly rebutted’”.

And “robustly rebutted” might not exactly sound like a full-blow declaration of hostilities but there is a whiff of royal grapeshot here. It would be nigh on impossible to calculate how many stories I’ve written charting the downward spiral of Charles and Harry’s relationship but, hold on tight, it sounds like it’s only getting worse.

Omid Scobie’s book Endgame looks set to take aim at the monarchy in an explosive way. Picture: Tim Rooke – Pool/Getty Images

From the Mail’s reporting it sounds like, if new allegations regarding the royal family and racism are raised by Endgame, there will be less sitting on hands and staying mum and more putting their dukes up.

Complicating this all further is the fresh mess that is Charles’ upcoming 75th birthday party. See, he’s having one, a small one (reportedly only his closest friends and family who will be popping around to Clarence House for champers and a Twiglet) and today, both sides are disputing whether or not the West Coast wailer of a duke got an invitation.

The Sunday Times has reported “although it is understood Charles invited his second son to the family gathering, the Duke of Sussex is not making the trip” only for the Telegraph’s Victoria Ward to take to X, the social media platform formerly known as useful, to reveal that “Prince Harry has not been invited to the King’s 75th birthday party”. A Sussex spokesperson told Ward that there had been “no contact” regarding Charles’ upcoming celebration. (Hope Camilla has remembered to defrost a few of those leftover pheasant sausage rolls in the deep freeze.)

Prince Harry has not been invited to the King’s 75th birthday party, despite claims that he’s turned down the invite. A Sussex spox says there has been “no contact” re next week’s celebrations

— Victoria Ward (@victoria_ward) November 6, 2023

If His Majesty and the Duke of Sussex can’t even agree on whether something arrived in the post (or in One’s inbox) then what hope is there for any great warming of relations or cessation of hostilities?

The Times has reported that while some members of the royal family “ initially sympathised with Harry and Meghan’s struggles with royal life” all that changed roughly a year ago with the unleashing of their Netflix series and his memoir Spare proving to be “the last straw.”

Per the Times’ royal editor Roya Nikkhah: “The King will miss his second son at his birthday party — though the same cannot be said for the rest of the family.”

Nikkhah spoke to “a source who recently spent time with the royal family in Scotland” and who revealed to her that prior to these money-spinning projects, inside the royal family, “there was always the hope that some things might be mended” with the Sussexes.

Meghan and Harry’s TV appearances and his book were said to be the “last straw” for his family. Picture: Oli SCARFF / AFP

However now, “the family has firmly shut the door on [the Sussexes] for the time being, because of the documentary and the book. … The King will be faster to forgive than the family because Harry is his son, but the door is still more shut than ajar at the moment.”

Just in case emotions might not be running high enough, Harry appeared in a new video for the charity Stand Up for Heroes, which was released nearly bang on the same time that King Charles was presiding over his first State Opening of parliament and William was in Singapore presiding over his uber successful Earthshot Prize initiative.

With Endgame looking likely to revive some of the most damaging allegations made about the royal family in modern history (looking at you unconscious bias), if not possibly raise some fresh, bruising claims of its own, and the Palace preparing to do any necessary “rebutting”, with the added cherry of this invited/not inhibited butting of heads, all indications point to stormy seas ahead.

You and I, we’ve been here before: Father versus son, brother versus brother, Buckingham Palace versus Montecito, Bucks Fizz versus Buddha Bowls. But if there is one thing we have learned in this herky-jerky journey of truth and torn necklaces and todgers, it is that trans-Atlantic relations can always get worse. Much worse.

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.