After receiving backlash for wearing the brooch to the Christmas event, Princess Michael issued an apology through a representative that read “Princess Michael is very sorry and distressed that [the brooch] has caused offense.”
The representative also noted that the brooch had been “a gift” the Princess had “worn many times before.”
Despite that apology, Scobie writes that Princess Michael never expressed any regret to Markle, who, as a mixed-race guest at the event in question, would have been the most likely to be offended.
“Blinded by unconscious bias or just callously indifferent, it’s hard to say,” Scobie writes, “but she certainly failed to recognize the cultural insensitivity of wearing a brooch featuring a highly exoticized bust of a Black man in servant regalia.”
He continues, “She later apologized for the indiscretion (though never directly to Meghan).”
The Brooch Debacle Wasn’t The First Time The Princess Of Kent Had Been Accused Of Racism
Scobie also writes in Endgame that one of his sources overheard the Princess gossiping about Markle with an aide in 2021 when she allegedly said “[Meghan’s] made it all about race because that’s all everyone does these days” about the Sussexes‘ Oprah interview.
The brooch incident isn’t the only example Scobie gives in the book of racial insensitivity from the Royal Family as a whole or even of the Princess of Kent.
More tensions surrounding the skin color “conversations” Markle mentioned in the Oprah interview arose this week when the Dutch translation of Scobie’s book was pulled from shelves in the Netherlands because it “erroneously” named the people who questioned Prince Archie’s skin tone.
