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Prince William might have been hoping that his rumored association with Rose Hanbury would die down by now, but Omid Scobie’s book, Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival, is resurrecting the alleged affair. The author gives readers a look at how the gossip started and some reported insight on how the Prince of Wales reacted.
The story began in March 2019 when The Sun‘s Dan Wootton’s flamed the flames that Rose had become a “rural rival” to bestie Kate Middleton. The article insinuated that the Princess of Wales was doing her best to “phase out” her former friend after she had become too close to William. The rumor has never been substantiated, but it took on a life of its own on X, formerly Twitter. It got so bad that Christian Jones, the then-head of communications for Kensington Palace, had to call Prince William and his private secretary, Simon Case, into a top-secret meeting.
“Oh my God, I had to ask if they [the rumors] were true,” Jones told Scobie, per an excerpt obtained by SheKnows. William was “furious when the question came up” and “vehemently said it was not true.” Unfortunately, more British tabloids picked up the story and it snowballed instead of dying down like the palace had hoped. It took the intervention of the royal family‘s lawyers at Harbottle & Lewis to stop the rumors in its tracks — at least on the U.K. side. “In addition to being false and highly damaging, the publication of false speculation in respect of our client’s private life also constitutes a breach of his privacy pursuant to Article 8 of the European Convention to Human Writes,” the stern letter to media outlets read.
According to Scobie, William “remained in the loop” to make sure that his name wasn’t dragged through the mud. The author noted that during this time to get the Prince of Wales’ name out of the press, “there was an uptick in negative or revealing stories” about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, which the couple eventually found out someone at the palace was trading stories about them to help William out.
A William insider understood why he was “filled with rage” over the situation, but it still begs the question: Why did the royal family make Harry and Meghan the media’s sacrificial lambs? That question remains unanswered as the royal family feud continues years later.
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