His first book about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s dramatic departure from the Royal Family sent shockwaves through the Firm, and now biographer Omid Scobie is poised to release a brand-new book about the monarchy.
This time it focuses on the institution and its fight for survival – and it appears to contain yet more bombshell claims about the Sussexes – including explosive allegations about what happened on September 8, 2022, when the late Queen died at Balmoral.
The book is due for release at the end of the month but ahead of it hitting shelves, an excerpt from it has been published by US-based PEOPLE magazine, shedding more light on the relationship between Harry and Meghan and the likes of King Charles and Prince William.
Harry in the dark
One of the most explosive claims in the new excerpt is that Harry was “kept in the dark” about his late grandmother the Queen’s health decline before her death. The book alleges the Duke of Sussex was not told about worsening health in the hours before her death. The royal author adds Harry and his wife Meghan Markle had “no idea” the Royal Family was preparing for the Queen’s final hours.
In an extract from Mr Scobie’s book, which has been shared with PEOPLE, he writes: “The Sussexes had no idea that Buckingham Palace was already planning for the Queen’s final hours and the first days of the monarchy’s new era – until the duke’s phone started ringing. An unknown number. He usually ignored those.”
Meghan urged her husband to answer the phone and he accepted the call “just before it stopped”. Omid said: “Harry hadn’t spoken to his father much that year, but this was not the time for any father-and-son tension. Charles told him he and Camilla were about to leave Dumfries House for Balmoral, where Princess Anne was already by the Queen’s side. He told Harry to make his way to Scotland immediately.”
Harry ‘forced to beg’
Eventually Harry was informed of his grandmother’s ailing condition and managed to board a flight to Scotland. The late Queen’s death was announced to the world just after 6.30pm, not long before Harry’s plane landed in Aberdeen.
And according to the excerpt, Harry’s team had to ‘beg’ Buckingham Palace not to announce the sad news earlier.
It reads: “His team literally had to beg for them to wait for his plane to land and they reluctantly agreed to hold the statement back for a little bit,” confirmed a close family source.
But as stormy weather over Aberdeen International forced Harry’s plane to circle the airport numerous times before landing, patience at the Buckingham Palace press office wore thin — they could wait no longer and the announcement went live at 6:30 p.m.
“When Harry’s plane finally touched the tarmac twenty minutes later, he received a text from Meghan urging him to call ASAP followed by a breaking news alert via the BBC News app with the announcement of the Queen’s death.”
King Charles ‘betrayal’
Another bombshell claim is that Harry was left ‘crushed’ when he did not find out about the late Queen’s death until after it had been announced to the world, and that Charles’ apparent decision to keep him in the dark is not what his grandmother would have wanted.
The excerpt says the late monarch “would have wanted Harry to know that she had died before everyone else did”. When Elizabeth II died on September 8 last year, it was initially reported that Charles personally called Harry to tell him the news about his late grandmother.
However, in his bombshell memoir Spare, Harry contests this and says that he found out about her passing by reading about it on the BBC News website once he disembarked a flight to Aberdeen on his way to travelling to Balmoral, where the late Queen died.
It adds: “‘Harry was crushed,’ said a friend of the duke. ‘His relationship with the Queen was everything to him. She would have wanted him to know before it went out to the world. They could have waited just a little longer, it would have been nothing in the grand scheme of things, but no one respected that at all’.”
Harry’s real reason for quitting
Elsewhere, the book claims Harry was viewed as a “threat to the crown” and exposed the real reason the Duke of Sussex left the Royal Family. Harry and Meghan sensationally quit the Firm and the UK in early 2020 and have now carved out a new life for themselves in California – although tensions with the royals still exist.
“These are probably sad realisations that will be had far too late in the journey. In the eyes of some within the institution, Harry is a threat to the crown. His freedom to exert his own thinking outside of the confines of the institution has made him the enemy,” he writes.
William’s brutal response
The excerpt also goes into Harry’s very rocky relationship with his brother Prince William – which is said to be at an all-time low. The siblings have now been locked in a bitter feud for a number of years – and it seems there is no end in sight.
One of the flashpoints in their rift was the publication of Harry’s explosive memoir, Spare, in which he claimed that William physically attacked him in a heated row at Kensington Palace, amongst other allegations.
In a series of interviews earlier this year, Harry said he wanted an apology from his family about how he was treated – especially as he and Meghan voiced their concerns about how life in the Firm had been affecting their mental health. However, Mr Scobie states that “absolutely nothing has changed” between William and Harry recently.
Detailing the brutal one-word response Harry received when leaving royal life, he writes: “I was talking to a source quite early on in the process, and they called Harry a ‘defector’ and said that was William’s view. These were two men who once upon a time were firmly aligned in their outlook. One of them had to move on to also protect the crown.”
‘Brainwashing’ fears
Meanwhile, the book also goes as far as to say that William “doesn’t want to know” his younger brother, who he believes has been ‘brainwashed by an army of therapists’.
It claims “[William] believes Harry and Meghan blindsided the family, even the Queen, with their public complaints and their ‘oh so California’ self-importance (an opinion he has repeatedly voiced in various ways to friends and aides during the past two years).
Convinced Harry’s been brainwashed by an ‘army of therapists’, William says he no longer even recognises his own brother, a source said.”
Endgame will be released at the end of this month – and is described on Amazon as “a penetrating investigation into the current state of the British monarchy”. The book’s description goes on to say: “An unpopular king, a power-hungry heir to the throne, a queen willing to go to dangerous lengths to preserve her image, and a prince forced to start a new life after being betrayed by his own family.” Endgame, which will be published on November 28, is subtitled “Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival”.
