Princess Eugenie contacted Prince Harry as the Queen’s health deteriorated in the hours before her death, a new book claims.
Details from Endgame, the new book about the Sussexes and the royal family from royal biographer Omid Scobie, claim the daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, 33, contacted her cousin to find out more about their grandmother’s condition.
The contact came as the Duke of Sussex raced against time to Balmoral Castle, where the Queen had been in residence, to try to get to her side before she died. Sadly, Her Majesty died before Harry arrived.
Scobie writes in his book that Eugenie, who is a close friend of the Sussexes and has maintained a relationship with them since their move to Montecito, wanted to know if he had more information about the queen’s condition than what had been shared with her.
The biographer writes that Eugenie had heard it was “time” but didn’t have much more information, in a clip from Endgame shared with People magazine.
A new book about the Sussexes and their rift with the royal family claims Princess Eugenie contacted her cousin Prince Harry for more information when the health of their grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, began to decline
Harry and Eugenie have always had a close relationship, and she has remained close to him and Meghan Markle in recent years, despite his deepening rift with his brother Prince William, and father King Charles.
In September, after the Sussexes spent a week in Dusseldorf hosting the 2023 Invictus Games, they took a detour on their way home to California to visit Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank in Portugal.
At the time it was reported that they had a ‘lightning romantic escape to the village of Melides in the Alentejo region of the country – where Eugenie and Jack have a house.
Now Scobie’s book provides more details about their close relationship, as he claims Eugenie turned to her cousin for reliable information when their grandmother’s health declined.
Elsewhere, as the book details the day Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II died, it is claimed that Harry was largely ‘kept in the dark’ about what happened to his grandmother in the days leading up to her death.
Mr Scobie told how the Sussexes had visited Britain on a series of engagements in September 2022, when the palace announced that Queen Elizabeth had been advised to rest by her doctors.
He writes: ‘The next morning, the Sussexes had no idea that Buckingham Palace was already making plans for the Queen’s final hours and the first days of the new era of the monarchy – until the Duke’s phone started ringing. An unknown number. Most of the time he ignored them.’
Meghan told her husband to answer the phone and he accepted the call “just before it stopped,” the author wrote.
He continues: ‘Harry hadn’t spoken much to his father that year, but this was not the time for father-and-son tensions. Charles told him that he and Camilla were about to leave Dumfries House for Balmoral, where Princess Anne was already at the Queen’s side. He told Harry to go to Scotland at once.’
Harry sent a text message to his brother William asking how he and Kate were planning to go to Scotland and if they could travel together, but received no response, Mr Scobie claims.
He was later told that Harry had managed to arrange a flight with his uncles Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.
“It was disturbing to witness,” Scobie claims he was told by a source close to the Sussexes. ‘(Harry) was all alone.’
Mr Scobie claims that Palace ‘sources’ informed certain newspapers that Charles had personally shared the news of the Queen’s illness with his son. He quoted a friend of the duke as saying Harry was “devastated” by it.
The journalists make new claims about the damaged relationship between William and Harry.
Mr Scobie even claims that William ‘doesn’t want to know’ his younger brother, who he claims has been ‘brainwashed by an army of therapists’.
He writes: ‘I spoke to a source quite early in the process, and they called Harry a ‘defector’ and said that was William’s view.
‘These were two men who once had the same vision. One of them had to move on to protect the crown as well.’
