Prince Harry was reportedly viewed as a “threat to the crown” before he and Meghan Markle stepped down as senior royals in 2020, if we are to believe a brand new interview with Finding Freedom author Omid Scobie.
Scobie, who is considered to be a close friend of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, spoke to People for its latest cover story ahead of the release of his new book Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival, which came out on November 28th. The book will reportedly talk about life after Queen Elizabeth II’s death, and will go into more detail about the aftermath of Megxit – i.e., when Prince Harry and Meghan stepped down as senior royals – and Prince Harry’s strained relationship with his brother.
Prince Harry Is Reportedly A 'Threat' To The Crown
"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," Scobie dished to the pub. "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," he added, before going on to tell the mag that he believes Prince William has prioritized the future of the British monarchy over a relationship with his brother.
"In the eyes of some within the institution, Harry is a threat to the crown," Scobie continued. "His freedom to exert his own thinking outside of the confines of the institution has made him the enemy." This is why, according to Scobie, "there's no going back," and his relationship with his brother an and sister-in-law Kate Middleton will never be the same. The words "it's over," which appear on the front cover of People's November 27th, 2023 issue, seem to summarize it quite well.
Prince Harry touched on his fractured relationship with his brother in his bombshell memoir Spare, which came out in January this year. And according to Scobie, the father-of-two actually hoped that the memoir would help him communicate with his family, but it sadly didn't have the desired effect.
"I saw Harry's release of Spare as his last attempt at telling his family how he's felt for years, because clearly there's never been an open enough forum to have these conversations or share these feelings," Scobie said. In Endgame, Scobie writes that the royal family is choosing to ignore Prince Harry's feelings because "part of the buy-in from the [British] public is that the royal family is the nation's family."
Prince Harry Reportedly Found Out About The Queen's Death On BBC News
Scobie also touched on the late Queen Elizabeth II's death, writing that Prince Harry found out his grandmother had died after receiving a BBC News app alert about it. According to extracts from the book which have been obtained by People and shared by The Times and The Independent, Prince Harry chartered a plane from Luton to Balmoral for $37,000 after learning about his grandmother's deteriorating health. When he was in the air and therefore unable to be reached, the news of her death was announced, and he found out about it once the plane had landed.
Prince Harry's team was reportedly engaged in a "tug-of-war" with Buckingham Palace about whether the news should be revealed to the world before Prince Harry had a chance to hear it from the family, but the Palace ultimately decided to go ahead and break the news about the Queen's death before letting him know.
A close friend reportedly told Scobie that Prince Harry was "crushed" by this as "his relationship with the Queen was everything to him," and "she would have wanted him to know before it went out to the world." The friend reportedly added: "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."
