I chatted with Omid Scobie about ENDGAME
Our post-translation-drama conversation was refreshingly candid about this new era for the British Monarchy.
As someone who read Omid Scobie’s Endgame before the British press, who nonetheless spent the days leading up to its release lambasting the author for “attacks” on the Royal Family, seeing the media frenzy develop around this book was truly something else. The book that I read paints a picture of a monarchy that is genuinely in crisis, and lays out its case carefully and precisely, using anecdotes from Omid’s 11-year period on the Palace beat as a backbone. It was a book that I felt he should be proud of.
Then, the press tour for Endgame was abruptly cut short when a Dutch translation of the book revealed information that was never supposed to make it to print: that King Charles and Catherine, Princess of Wales, had been responsible for voicing “concerns” over the skintone of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s children. The backlash—not to that act of racism, but to Omid for bringing it up—was swift and vitriolic.
That doesn’t change the fact that Endgame is a book that encompasses so much more than the current media conversation would have you believe. You can find it wherever you buy your books, and I recommend it for an objective look at how Buckingham Palace and the British press have entered the “Carolean era.” You’ll also find incisive portrayals of all the key players in the Firm—Charles, William, Kate, Camilla, etc.—and how they engage in the games played within the modern monarchy.
I had initially hoped to have Omid answer some questions about the book during its release week, but for obvious reasons, we had to push our interview back. Now, he has graciously answered not only my original questions, but has also touched on the “race row” with refreshing transparency. Pour yourself a cup of tea, because you’ll need something to sip as you read along.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
The Fascinator is a reader-supported publication. To help me continue to provide commentary like this full-time, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
Firstly, what made you want to write THIS book?
Having covered the Royals since 2011, I feel like my Royal reporting career has covered several different versions of myself. When I used to be a magazine editor, my Royal coverage was very much…exactly the way the palace would like it to be. It was fawning, it was breathless, it was puff-piece-ish, and it was very collaborative at times.
It wasn't until Harry and Meghan came on the scene, and I went full time with Royal reporting that I realized that some of the most interesting stories, some of the most fascinating goings-on were the stuff that…it wasn't so appreciated when we went near it.
The Royal press pack as a whole—not just the Rota, but the press, the full group of Royal correspondents—all follow a very similar company line, a very similar narrative. When I was covering Harry and Meghan's story, that was really the first time I pivoted away from it. The things I was seeing and hearing and witnessing myself were so different to what was being covered in the press.
And so that experience of releasing Finding Freedom—even that book tries to keep a balance because you still want to ensure some kind of future for yourself on the beats. That really made me realize that to tell the best story, you had to shine a light in the darkest places. You had to get uncomfortable. For Endgame, especially given the timing, now thrust into the Carolean era, it just felt like the right time to step back and really get into the last five or six years and what that has meant for the Royal family, for the Royal institution at large, and also for its future.
Is that why you open Endgame with a recap of the days surrounding Queen Elizabeth’s death and the transition into a new era at the Palace?
After the death of the Queen, we spent so much time celebrating what was so special about her reign. It was very difficult to find people who didn't feel positively or warmly about Queen Elizabeth II. So much of that was down to her being a woman who always maintained a certain line of ethics, morals, principles, and values that I thought were so key to what the Royal family stood for, this family that was kind of emblematic of traditional British family values.
“Is this an institution that still upholds the morals, values, and ethical conduct that we would expect from an institution whose monarch is not only head of state, but also the head of the Church of England?”
She was a champion of those, but also an example of those. After her death, many of those things appear to be missing in our current lineup…the actions, the behaviors, and the doings within the recent years involving many of the working Royal Family members. I really wanted to take a look at that, and doing that dance with the palace to maintain access would've been prohibitive to telling a great story.
I'm willing to burn, and at this point, I have burned all of my bridges pretty much, but it's enabled me to report on this without fear or favor. I don't think I've ever seen a Royal correspondent—a full-time Royal reporter—ever truly report without fear or favor. That's not to say there aren't good journalists in that space, but when it comes to telling this story without boundaries or limitations, I think that this book, despite its controversy, achieves that.
What is your research process like while working on something like this? How did you gain insight into the final days of Queen Elizabeth II, for example, or the goings-on at the Palace under King Charles III?
It is very interesting. Not only is this book a collection of reporting from 60-odd interviews and conversations that I've had during the writing and reporting process, but I've also gathered years of reporting notes and things that I either haven't used or haven't had a space for, or stories…that I haven't perhaps been comfortable telling because I didn't want to face the repercussions.
It's important to be in those media briefings [for example] ahead of the Queen's funeral or for Prince Phillip's death, and to have access to the various press points that the palace set up. But in terms of those final days of Queen Elizabeth II, I was very, I guess, fortunate. That might not be the right word to use, but I was lucky that this was at the beginning of my writing process before I was getting into great detail with anyone about what Endgame would be. The premise when I approached anyone was, “I'm doing a book on the future of the Royal family,” and it was kept very vague.
In those earlier months before I really let people know what it was about, it was much easier to have conversations with people that were either part of the current court or had been in the past. I've also been fortunate enough to work with many of these people over the years and in the past, be it on television in the commentary space, but also as a Royal correspondent. So it's a real mix of characters.
“I don't think I've ever seen a Royal correspondent—a full-time Royal reporter—ever truly report without fear or favor.”
I don't think I've told anyone this yet, but this book does include things that I think other Royal correspondents would love to say or share (and I don't talk for all, I can only talk for a few), but [who] don't have the ability to do so at this point in time. I've also carried out my own fact-checking, but it has allowed me or this book to be a vehicle for some of those things. Not all of my sources are necessarily the people that you would imagine. I'll leave it at that.
I often refer to Charles’ monarchy as “Palace 2.0.” Have you observed a noticeable shift in the way the Palace operates under Charles, as opposed to under Elizabeth?
It's impossible for it to be the same. We have a completely different lineup of staff. Charles did really clear much of the roster when he got the top job. And a lot of that I put down to the fact that he was not a universally supported monarch-in-waiting. There were many people in the Queen's household who felt that he didn't have the kind of minerals, or to quote one, the “moxie” for this job.
To now see Charles build, and as he should, a course around him of individuals who do support him, who do believe in him, has obviously been him preparing the right environment for him to operate in.
The way in which he's seen is very different from his mother. People have referred to Charles to me as the “bridge to a true successor.” Again, the attitude towards Charles is very different. He's seen as an interim monarch, not as the kind of “one true hope,” and that creates a very different environment for him to operate in.
What about the way that the Firm itself operates when it comes to administrative or media efforts?
It's kind of the same playbook as before. The big difference I see is this lack of cohesion between the different households. We see a much more siloed approach from the major Royals—from King Charles, from Prince William. There seems to be less of a collaborative effort, and that really goes against what we saw the Queen do when she was the Head of State. To her, it was never about herself. It was always about what she was there to serve and represent. And everyone working underneath her were there to not just support her, but to support the crown.
There does seem to be much more of focus on personal agendas, particularly from William and Charles. And those personal agendas are also very different. This is a father and son who are not working from the same playbook.
I get the sense that we’re entering an era in which “rival courts” will become a topic of conversation once again. Of course, this isn’t anything new for the monarchy—the Georgians, in particular, famously had fathers and sons disagree on how the Palace should operate.
Yeah, the story of royal fathers and sons at loggerheads is as Shakespearian as it comes, and has been long chronicled in royal history.
Is it troubling to see this age-old trope play out in 2023?
I think in this era, the Carolean era, we have to assess Charles not only as a constitutional monarch but as a family figurehead, as the leader of the House of Windsor. And I've always felt that his inability to convene and command his own family speaks to a much larger issue of him as a head of state. I think what we're seeing happen between William and Charles today may be a much bigger problem in the future.
Charles took the throne as a much less popular monarch than his mother. The late Queen was more popular than the institution itself. And Charles could benefit from perhaps some of the popularity that his son, Prince William, and Catherine continue to enjoy. Instead, we've seen an almost intentional distancing between the two, where the Wales agenda has been very much siloed away from King Charles's own work. We have not seen father and son side by side on engagements.
We have also not seen a huge amount in terms of a show of support for King Charles on the throne from the heir. In fact, not only have we seen Prince William chomping at the bit for his turn—which is fine in itself—but we also see him stepping on the heels of his father very early on in what could still be a 15-20 year reign.
What does that rivalry look like?
I think it's impossible not to think of the time after the Coronation where, three days later, when Westminster Alley hadn't even been cleared out yet, we were already receiving briefings from Kensington Palace about how William would do things his way, and his way will be much more modern; it will be much more considerate of the economic climates and the times that we're in. Less pomp, less spending.
I noticed very recently from the royal correspondent at the Express, a long piece about Prince William's “five point plan” for when he becomes king. We heard William speaking in Singapore about how he hopes that moving forward as heir, his work will have lasting impact—tangible results—rather than just highlighting causes. Some saw that as a little bit of a diss to the others.
I think there is this…not only impatience, but perhaps not the level of respect one would expect the heir to have for the current reigning monarch. As people start to get bored of the Montecito vs. London story, I do think that this growing rivalry between father and son, if you want to call it that, will be a story that we will focus on.
Speaking of rivalries, you also write about the relationship between Prince William and Prince Harry for this book. What does that royal relationship signify to you about the state of the monarchy itself?
I think what has been most sad about watching the breakdown in that relationship was the fact that…these were two brothers who were never quite as close as we thought. But they were, at the very least, often on the same page.
When I first started covering this beat, I remember Prince William as a man who loathed the press more than Harry did. Harry was someone who, despite his irritation with the press, I felt would often try to win the press over. He would come over and talk to some of the most, how can I describe them…difficult tabloid characters on the royal beats, almost in a way to hope that if he made them like him, they would be kinder to him.
For William, there was always that kind of stately distance that he kept [from the press]. As Harry said [in Spare], they were once brothers who had promised they would never let the games and the manipulation and the PR tactics ever get in the way of their relationship, like it did their family members. And we now see that that's exactly what got in the way between the brothers.
Even more disturbing me is a detail in Endgame: there were certain figures central in Prince William's life such as Simon Case, his private secretary, who appeared to really hammer on the cracks between the brothers in order to benefit Prince William and to rehabilitate his image.
Why would Prince William’s image need rehabbing? That’s a phrase most often used with Queen Camilla.
We can't forget that 5-6 years ago, he was still known as work-shy and lazy. And in order to transform him into the “statesman in the making,” which we often hear in Palace briefings, was to do anything possible to differentiate him from his wayward brother. Much of that involved throwing Harry under the bus. It goes back to what I was saying to you earlier about why I wanted to write this book. Is this an institution that still upholds the morals, values, and ethical conduct that we would expect from an institution whose monarch is not only head of state, but also the head of the Church of England?
I look at some of the actions and decisions made by William, or at least enabled by William within his household, and I don't see it ticking or checking those boxes. And it's a real shame because there's no history of that when you look at the Queen. She was always above the fray. She never cared about her press or the polls or anything like that. It has been very sad to see these selfish agendas get in the way of family values, especially for an institution whose family at the center of it was supposed to be emblematic of traditional British family values.
There’s a real tendency in royal reporting to link Palace news to Harry and Meghan.
Don't we know it? Sorry.
What do you make of this, nearly four years after they announced their departure from their positions as senior working royals? Do you think focusing so much attention on their “departure” gets at the root of the monarchy’s difficulties?
I think that it would, if people were actually willing to truly focus on what led to their departure. So much of that just gets ignored or intentionally misrepresented because ultimately the things they said don't suit the narratives of the larger portion of the British print press.
Those incidents that led to Harry and Meghan’s departure highlight many of the things that the royal family are doing wrong. It's the same between the fallout between William and Harry, allowing themselves to get so wrapped up in these games with the press.
The amount of effort and energy that goes into maintaining this very toxic relationship with the Daily Mail, for example, has caused so much harm, so much pain to this family. But [the Daily Mail] continues to benefit from that relationship, because of the way family members within the institution fear this publication on a level that I don't even think is necessary. This is an institution that seems to forget that the print press in the UK is dying a very slow death, and that they themselves are helping keep it alive.
The link to palace news to Harry and Meghan is really about clickbait at this point. If it doesn't have Harry and Meghan in the headline or a link somewhere in the story, it won't even get a fraction of the traffic. I don't say that as the couple's alleged “mouthpiece” or “cheerleader.” I say that as someone who has seen the analytics for a number of major news sites over the years, and has had these conversations with other editors in that space.
You and I have both been called “Meghan’s Cheerleader.” How do you feel about that label?
I was very frustrated when people started to first write about this book before it came out because it was often referred to as “Harry and Meghan's book” or a follow-up to the last book I did.
And that couldn't be further from the truth. I say very early on—in the first chapter—that Harry and Meghan are irrelevant to the future of the monarchy. They no longer play a role in that space, but their experiences and their stories serve as great examples for areas that need to be worked on, improved on, and where accountability needs to be taken.
One of the stories that I go into in the book, which you don't need me to tell you, is about the conversations over—and that conversation being concerns, the bit that everyone chooses not to include in their coverage of this incident—concerns over the darkness of Archie's skin.
Yes, and you recently wrote that the “levels of hysteria” about this, in the aftermath of Endgame, “sends a clear message that [race] issues just don’t matter” in the Palace’s view.
Listen, the Dutch translation situation was extremely unfortunate and frustrating and quite upsetting for me because I only ever signed off on one book that I tirelessly legaled for two months, with two barristers and an in-house legal team. But I never felt that it was that important who the names were in those conversations.
What was more important was the fact that the conversation had never been dealt with. There were two members of this family who, in the eyes of the only woman of color who had married in, had an extremely problematic conversation about the shade of a child's skin. It was felt important enough to address not only privately, but also publicly.
For the Palace to publicly pour doubt on that so early on, it sent out a really horrendous message to people of color across the nation and Commonwealth that your thoughts, your feelings, and your experiences aren't as valid as “Our” interpretation. And it spoke to a much bigger issue that the Palace has when it comes to conversations about race and unconscious bias.
Why is the Palace’s handling of these “race rows” consistently important to you in discussing the monarchy’s longevity?
The conversation around race and the monarchy is one that, amongst a kind of core demographic of patriotic royalists, is actually one that no one wants to have. It is an absolute eye roll should the subject even come up.
And the Palace, as I talk about in the book, really lean into that at times—really rest their laurels or find comfort in that, because they too are able to shirk this subject and get away with it. But as Britain becomes much more of a melting pot of people of all different backgrounds…in the 60-something million population of Britain right now, 13 or so million are people of color, non-whites, or mixed. And amongst this growing population, there is a desire to see these conversations had.
This is a royal family whose history of colonialism and its bloodstained links to the slave trade are not solely something of the past, but have shaped race relations in the UK today. Many of the same rhetorics that were rolled out around people of color during that time of slavery are the same sentiments that are applied to foreigners and immigrants in Britain today.
This is a legacy that was started by the royal institution. So to ignore any conversation about [it] shows…not only privilege to be even in a position that you can get away with ignoring it, but it also this kind of willful ignorance. To see it as “not important enough to address” sends out a very damaging message, one that I think more and more people are aware of.
I was at least encouraged [as the Dutch translation of Endgame was discussed] to see many people still want to have this conversation around modern race issues within the Royal Family, and the things that led to the departure of the Duchess of Sussex.
When we talk about modernizing the monarchy, it frustrates me when I hear a royal commentator say, "They cut down the service from three hours to two hours, and it's a real show of how modern things will be for Charles." None of this is modernization. Modernizing is turning yourself into an institution that not only could represent diversity and inclusivity, but also become ambassadors of those conversations themselves. It's not out of reach. It's just that they don't want to reach that far.
Why does it matter if the monarchy is in its endgame? What would we lose if the British Royal Family no longer existed?
A lot of people ask me why I called this book Endgame. They assume that I'm declaring that it's the end of the monarchy, or that I want it to be the end of the monarchy, neither of which are true.
“Accept that change is scary and terrifying, but it has to happen. Otherwise, you find yourself very quickly becoming a relic from the past.”
I'm by no means a royalist, but I'm also not an anti-monarchist. I really see the benefits to having an apolitical institution at the head of our country, in some ways more than I see the benefit of an elected apolitical president, for example, because anyone in that position to run for that will be motivated by something. To have a group of people who are almost forced into it is perhaps the safest way of doing it, as long as they listen to the nation that they serve.
For the monarchy which has enjoyed glory for so long, to throw it all away simply over this resistance to change, this resistance to accountability, would be such a wasted opportunity.
What can be done to avert this current era becoming the monarchy’s endgame?
When I say it's the endgame, that endgame to me is this fork in the road. And it's a fork we've seen many European monarchies face over the years, which is one leads to continued glory, and the other is a path to insignificance and to essentially becoming a tourist attraction.
Both of those are an option for the Royal Family, but only one of those will work if they take on board some of the criticism and the needs and wants that come from the nation, and I don't just mean from myself. Outside of the world of British newspapers, there are many people who feel disappointed in or apathetic to the royal family, or who even feel against the royal family. Those groups are growing, and I don't see enough effort going into stopping that.
Many of the things that I raise in this book are things that we already know. I'm laying out the facts, because I feel that the noise that comes from the echo chamber that [the Royal Family] create for themselves often doesn't allow these things to penetrate that space. I wanted a book to be able to put all of this together and for readers to inform their own opinions. But I also hope that it starts bigger conversations which allow us to feel comfortable scrutinizing this institution.
What can be done is to listen, and to act. And to accept that change is scary and terrifying, but it has to happen. Otherwise, you find yourself very quickly becoming a relic from the past.
What, if anything, might you take as a visible sign that the Palace was turning things around? What should we watch out for?
One year into Charles's reign is certainly too early to tell what really will be the significant changes over the years ahead. We've heard a lot of talk about money being saved, and spending changing in certain areas, but we have yet to see any proof of that.
So, I will only focus on something that I can actually say has changed. I mentioned it briefly in the book, but I'll elaborate. When Prince William took on his current head of communications, he invited me out to meet. During our conversation, he was aware of some of the things that I had experienced after the release of my book. He was aware of the period of time that I was banned from engagements. It was felt that there was a darkness to that period of time, and things that were done should never have happened. He made it very clear that moving forward, he wouldn't have the same favorites within the press pack, he wouldn't get involved in the same games, and he wouldn't brief things out on such a regular basis.
Whilst we do see a hell of a lot of things still coming up from the palace, I have seen a change when it comes to Kensington Palace. Some of the things that William has done in the past year, and haven't had any royal reporters attend whatsoever (such as going out with the Big Issue, or the Earthshot burger truck stunt or whatever that was). These things always used to happen with at least one member of the Royal Rota present. We see tighter control on some of the engagements that the Waleses are doing.
I know within the press pack there's actually been a bit of frustration that not enough briefing comes from KP, and that they're really trying to control their narrative at a higher level without leaning on the press. So much of that is through the videos that they make—these montaged clips and their own social media.
However, without Harry and Meghan in the mix, it's very difficult to see the scale of that change. At the moment, within the current working lineup, there is no enemy. There is no one to throw under the bus in the way that Harry and Meghan were repeatedly used as collateral damage or to boost the reputation or popularity of others.
It starts small, but I have seen some change in that space. Watch this space… because as we know, change does not happen very often within the Royal Institution.
Just a few more fun questions to wrap up…
Favorite royal era from history?
Anything to do with—and this is far away from the Windsor era—Henry VIII. I think just from the fact that he was this wild merciless king that executes something like, what 60,000 people during his reign? And some of his really bizarre quirks and habits, I love the fact that he had people kiss his bed linen every morning to make sure that it wasn't covered in poison. The fact that he had an entire court that included men who helped him change his underwear every day.
The kind of lunacy and bizarreness of that time I think will always be fascinating. Just anything to do with Tudors and Stuarts. It's a really fun era to study and also makes this Windsor era look incredibly tame and boring in comparison.
If you could have lunch with any royal, alive or dead, who are you choosing?
Oh wow. I think one of the most interesting—and this isn't to say that I necessarily would've liked them—would've been Queen Elizabeth I. I think of the fact that she defeated the Spanish armada, and she refused to marry at a time when she was under so much pressure to marry.
You read about her life, and she was supposedly super intelligent; she spoke so many languages. So many things, horrendous things [were] done during her time. But as a character, just absolutely fascinating. Many people credit her as the person that turned England into this kind of global superpower, having once been just this tiny, pathetic, insignificant state. And so just to be able to kind of witness her, her life, how she thought, and how she acted, I would say her.
If it was a living royal… You know what? I've spent enough time around all of them that I think I'm done on that front.
I must extend one more massive “Thank you” to Omid Scobie for answering these burning questions for me. If you haven’t yet read Endgame, you can pick it up wherever you buy books.
Wow, that last line, Scobie is so done withe the Royal Family.
Very nice and thorough interview, made me want to buy and read Endgame.