Palace considers legal action after Piers Morgan names ‘royal racists’
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Buckingham Palace is considering legal action after Piers Morgan named the two so-called “royal racists” on UK television.
A royal source said: “We are considering all options.”
Morgan revealed the names of the two members of the Royal family caught up in a racism row involving the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, after their identities were published in the Dutch translation of a new royal book.
As copies of Omid Scobie’s Endgame were urgently pulled from the shelves in the Netherlands, Morgan said it was nonsensical that the names should be accessible in another country but not in the UK.
He told viewers of his TalkTV show Uncensored on Wednesday evening that he did not believe “any racist comments were ever made by any members of the Royal family”.
But he said he was sharing the names in order to allow an “open debate” about what really happened.
King goes on with official duties
The New York Post also named the two royals, whose identities were widely circulated online.
But the King shrugged off the furore as he ploughed on with official duties in Dubai, where he will address the Cop28 environmental summit.
As he arrived for a 30-minute bilateral meeting with Nigeria’s president Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Thursday morning, the two men shook hands warmly and the president asked after his wellbeing.
“I’m all right very much, just about,” the King replied. Sources insisted that the monarch was entirely focused on the summit.
Endgame describes how the Duchess of Sussex, 42, sent a letter to the King, who at the time was Prince of Wales, in which she expressed concerns about unconscious bias in the Royal family.
The letter, as first revealed in The Telegraph, was sent in the wake of the Sussexes’ March 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview, in which Meghan alleged that a member of the Royal family had speculated about the colour of her unborn son’s skin.
Scobie reveals that the Duchess complained to her father-in-law about two people who had upset her by commenting about Prince Archie’s skin tone.
However, in the English language version of the book, he stops short of naming them, citing “laws in the UK”.
He has blamed the fact the identities were included in the Dutch edition on a translation error and denied that it was a publicity stunt to sell books.
Scobie told ITV’s This Morning that he was frustrated the names had been printed but said he had never submitted a version of the manuscript that included them.
Meanwhile, the Dutch publisher, Xander Uitgevers, appeared to row back on earlier claims that it was the result of an “error (that) occurred in the Dutch translation”.
A statement released on Wednesday said the book had been temporarily withdrawn “due to an error that occurred in the Dutch edition”.
Dutch bidding war
A spokesman for the publisher told The Telegraph he was unable to divulge further information, save to add: “We’re investigating it.”
The debacle sparked a bidding war for Dutch copies of the book, which on Thursday were on sale on Dutch auction sites for as much as €185 per copy.
Morgan delivered a lengthy monologue on the subject on his TalkTV show, pouring scorn on the various accounts given and said he would name the accused royals in order to kick-start the process of getting to the truth.
“I’m going to cut through all this c--p. I’m going to tell you the names of the two senior royals who are named in the Dutch version of the book,” he said.
“Because frankly, if Dutch people wandering into a bookshop can pick it up and see these names then you, British people here who actually pay for the British Royal family, you’re entitled to know too.
“And then we can have an open debate about this whole farrago. Because I don’t believe any racist comments were ever made by any members of the Royal family, and until there is actual evidence of those comments being made, I will never believe it.
“But now we can start the process of finding out if they ever got uttered, what the context was, and whether there was any racial intent at all.
“Like I say, I don’t believe there was.”
Experts question how names inserted by accident
Many experts have questioned how the names could have been inserted into the manuscript in error.
The Dutch version discusses the letters sent between Meghan and the King on page 128.
“In those private letters an identity was revealed and confirmed,” it says, before naming one of the alleged culprits.
The person responsible meant “no ill will or bias”, according to Scobie. The book quotes a royal insider who claims that person wanted to clarify that point, which was considered “very important.”
He then returns to the subject on page 334, identifying both people named in Meghan’s letter who “took part in such conversations about Archie.”
However, that paragraph does not appear in the English version, which skips from a reference to the Princess of Wales jokingly shuddering when Meghan’s name was mentioned to a source quote about how she had always got on with Prince Harry but would never again trust him.
