Expert on King Charles vs Prince William: "The end of the monarchy as we know it is a possibility"

"This is the one time where I feel like the reporting is written without fear or favor," says author Omid Scobie. As a journalist who's spent over a dozen years covering the royal family, Scobie has had a first-row seat for some of the biggest moments in the modern British monarchy, from the marriage of Prince William and Catherine to the notorious 2020 Megxit of "spare" Prince Harry and Meghan, through the death of Elizabeth II and the reign of the new king, Charles. And now with his new book "Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy's Fight for Survival," he says, that he was determined to "shine a light in the darkest places, even if that meant burning my bridges along the way."

The book has already made headline news in the U.K., where Scobie's backstage insights into the famous family's feuds and power plays has seemingly ruffled royal feathers. But "Endgame" isn't a celebrity gossip tell-all — it's a thoughtful assessment of the tumultuous present state and questionable future of what Scobie reminds us remains, at its heart, "a publicly funded institution" deeply entwined in the lives of millions of individuals around the world.

In a frank recent "Salon Talks," Scobie told me why he believes the monarchy is at an inflection point, how William has "hardened" into his role of lifelong company man for the Firm and why even behind closed doors, "Hierarchy is more important than anything else." You can watch my full interview with Scobie here, or read the transcript of our conversation below.

The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You started writing this in the summer of 2022, an interesting time.

A different time.

It wound up being a cataclysmic one. What was the book you thought you were going to write and how did it change?

The plan was always to write a book about the future and current state of the royal family. Of course, that current state that I put pen to paper in was a queen still on the throne, celebrating 70 years and all that came with it. Once I got into the writing process, of course, was the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. Instead of theorizing about what the Carolean era with King Charles as the head of state would look like, we were suddenly in it and thankfully had a front row seat, not just to the present time, but also way back until since 2011.

It's really been an interesting journey to chronicle in this book. As I say from the very beginning, this is the one time where I feel like the reporting is written without fear or favor. So much of being a royal correspondent is about maintaining that relationship with the palace because you want to be invited to the media briefings, get the heads-up text messages before something breaks or be included in those private drinks receptions with members of the royal family. I think to write this book, I had to step away and shine a light in the darkest places, even if that meant burning my bridges along the way.

You have been reporting on this family for a dozen years. We don't know what it looks like inside the rota or the informal rota and what it means to then be taken out of it. How does it change? What is the currency that you are operating with with this family, and are there different members who are playing in different streams?

When you look at the royal press pack, and I include the rota in that, but also just the wider extension of it too, the people who dedicate their full-time careers to covering the lives and work of members of the royal family, you could liken it to the White House press pool. I think where the big difference lies is that as a member of the press covering the White House, you are able to report without fear or favor along the way. With the palace, there is a very specific dance that's required, a little give and take. Whilst you may be able to rock the boat here and there with a little bit of criticism or shining a light on something that they may not necessarily want out there, there's an expectation that you'll never take it too far, that the secrets remain with you.

I say in the early stages of the book that some of these stories other royal correspondents know about, but they know that to report them may lead to an exclusion from covering royal engagements or being left out of some of those really important briefings.

This is a publicly funded institution. I think that we should be able to write about them critically and scrutinize them in a way that we do our politicians. But because of the parameters and restrictions that come with being part of the royal press pack, what the public are often getting is this very rose-tinted view of the ins and outs of the working royals. That does the public a disservice, particularly at a time where after the passing of the queen, we are now having real questions and conversations about the purpose, the future and the relevancy of the royal family.

When I covered the queen's funeral and her passing, one of the things that we heard time and time again from palace aides, past and present, friends of the family, that all spoke on the record was this respect they had for the queen for remaining above the fray, for always keeping the focus on the crown and the job at hand and never making it about herself, and also always upholding the values, the morals, the ethics and the principles that come with what supposedly the crown represents, those traditional British family values that the royal family are supposed to be championing.

But I think with her loss, we're at a point where one should and needs to question, are the current working royals also adhering to those brilliant values and ethics that we celebrated the queen for? Does this cast of characters, which includes Prince Andrew and Camilla and Charles and their history, not only with the sort of games they've played with the press, but also in the tragic life of Princess Diana, and of course the fallout between William and Harry? It's so much more than family gossip or a soap opera. These are people that represent Britain on the world stage and I think we have a right to be able to talk about them in this democratic society, even if when you look at the British press, that's not always the case.

Let's talk about the press because you have been at the mercy of it yourself. We don't necessarily understand in the U.S. that this is a game that the royal family very skillfully plays and they are working with the press and with the tabloid press. It's not, “Oh, I'm going to have an interview with The Telegraph.” This is about what are they feeding to The Mirror and to The Sun.

Yeah, absolutely.

What does that really look like and what does it mean when someone falls out of favor and gets thrown under a particular bus?

We heard Harry talk a little bit about this in “Spare” and the meaning of being the spare, that you are collateral damage in times of need. You are the distraction in times of need because ultimately it is about the monarch and their successor, and everyone else is just like a supporting character. There is no equality amongst human beings within the royal family. It's kind of like the corporate ladder.

What is interesting is to see just how deeply involved the British tabloids and British press altogether or large sections of are in the fractures between the family relations. Look at William and Harry for example. These were two brothers — William probably hated the press more than Harry at one point — that had promised each other that they would never allow the games that their parents got involved in and the people around them in the institution to get in between the two of them. Ultimately that is what's happened.

This is a family that wants to control the narrative. This is a family that wants to have a certain grip on their PR and it's very different to the queen's approach. I was always told that the queen couldn’t care less about poll figures because she knew that tides changed, that some years are good, some are not. If you carry on remaining focused on the work and duty, then everything else falls into place. Now we have members of the royal family operating in silos where it's all about one's own personal image, but that often comes at the cost of other family members.

I talk about in the book how once upon a time the Royal Institution was supported by the love or size of three other institutions. That was the British military, the armed forces, which throughout World War I and II, I would say that the majority of people living in Britain had some connection to, in some way, be it the family or family member, partner or themselves. To have a monarch that was head of the armed forces meant a lot. The head of the Church of England, our monarch, again. Britain was once a country that was predominantly active Christians. Today, the number of actively practicing Christians in Britain is something around 6%.

I was shocked when I read that.

Absolutely. As is the size of our military, which once could rival anyone on the world stage has been called out by other countries for just how much it's shrunk, how little it is compared to the rest of the world.

You're left with one other institution to support and help the monarchy in its fight for relevancy all the time and that's the institution of the British media, which itself is struggling. Print media has changed, the newspapers don't have the bite and the power that they once did. They don't have the readership that they once did. We've entered this era where the British media is keeping the royal family alive with its obsession with the dramas and the soap operas. And the royal family happily feed back into that with the briefings and the leaks and all the rest of it. They're sort of keeping each other alive, keeping each other relevant at this point.

I don't know who's the winner in this situation. For the British press, it's more headlines. They'll do whatever it takes to maintain that position on the world media landscape. For the royal family, I don't know if at this stage it's helping them because I look at some of the royal correspondents in the press pack who'll happily turn a blind eye to some of the goings on within the institution, which may be fine if no one else knew about it. But we're at a point now where nothing is hidden. There's always going to be a journalist such as myself or others who are happy to talk more candidly about some of the goings on or tackle them on issues such as race or the links to slavery that still aren't really ever addressed properly beyond abstract terms. Whilst you may have a media that is happy to enable certain things, for the rest of the country or the predominantly Black and brown Commonwealth who are watching, I don't know if it's enough at this point.

When Elizabeth died, there was a reassessment of her role in the world and this question of, what are we doing still having a monarchy? What are we still doing with this institution that is still in the present day doing racist things, saying racist things, behaving in manners that are absolutely tone-deaf, that feel very out of touch with the world, with the British people, and with the Commonwealth people? What don't they get?

I think when you operate or focus on the echo chamber that you're in, which with the royal family is the sort of right-wing, predominantly white royalist public, and continue to pander to a certain demographic, it may do well in the here and now, but as we're seeing with the younger generation who are growing up, they're either feeling extremely apathetic towards the royal family or they're feeling that it's entered this path of irrelevancy because it has failed to keep up with the times. The issue around slavery and the royal family's involvement in it, whilst many will argue it's unfair to put that on the current modern working royals, you can't break their ancestral links. You can't ignore the fact that this empire was built off the backs of slaves, that much of the wealth has been amassed from that time.

I look at King Willem-Alexander from the Netherlands as a really good example of how to tackle this situation maturely and impressively, even if it means possibly offending a section of the public that don't want to see you apologize because they feel it's in the past. Just a year ago, he stood in front of the Netherlands and apologized for his family's role, his ancestors' role in that time and also accepted that that time still to this day is having impact even if subconsciously on the way we interact with each other and the way that minority groups still face prejudice and persecution. That's something that not only did he acknowledge, he then announced a 30 million Euro research project to look into this on a deeper level. You can't argue against that. That's how you face these things in these times.

For the royal family to speak in abstract platitudes of whatever it is, I think Charles in Kenya recently said that this was just an atrocity of the past. Well, that's great, of course, go figure, but tell us a bit more about it. I think this unwillingness to face the past continues to affect their future, especially when we see the actions that we witness in the modern age still are rooted in some kind of bias or prejudice or even an ignorance, willingful ignorance, I would argue at times that I can't not notice.

Nowhere is that more evident obviously than Meghan. It seems the family was wildly at best unprepared for  how she would be perceived by the British people. She's an American, but there is a lot about this that is just straight-up racism, and she was not protected. What did the family not do right because of ignorance? And then at what point, because you were watching this, did you see it turn to, “Oh, she's going under the bus”?

Families all over the world experience the feeling of being unprepared when suddenly a family member marries someone of a different background and you are facing new conversations, new experiences, cultural differences. It's how one navigates that that is where you can see the minerals or the makeup of a person.

I think with the royal family, of course they were going to be unprepared for it and of course it was going to perhaps be slightly bumpy at the beginning. But I think when we reach the point where we have a working member of the royal family married to then the sixth in line to the throne who was saying, “This is making me unwell, these racist stories in the papers, these stereotypes, the treatment of me as a half Black woman . . . ”

The comments on the official Kensington [social media].

Exactly, which remained unchallenged for at least a year before finally they got someone in. To continue to be unheard during those cries for help, that's when I think it has reached a really problematic point. You can be unknowingly ignorant at the start, but I think when someone spells it out to you, that's when it becomes problematic.

Harry and Meghan talked about those conversations about Archie's skin color and they refer to them as concerns over the color of Archie's skin. Now, it's not unnormal for a family of mixed race grandchildren or children to wonder what a child might look like, what they might inherit from each side. I think when you introduce concerns over that, then it becomes problematic. They never use the words "racism." They apparently addressed it as unconscious bias, but as he points out, and as I feel as well, once that unconscious bias becomes conscious and you choose to continue to ignore it, then it's a problem.

I talk about in the book, my conversations with a senior Buckingham Palace aide who took issue with an op-ed I'd written after the Oprah interview where I felt that this kind of unwillingness to look at the issues or the experience of Meghan or really own any of it, seemed to uphold this white supremacy, this extreme privilege that was on full display. Rather than wanting to engage in a conversation about it, I was ignored for several weeks until I could finally sit down and ask what was the problem. This kind of unwillingness to ever address these issues or talk about them, lost them this prime opportunity for Meghan, whether you like her or not, to be a working member of the royal family. We're now left with a much leaner lineup of working royals, one that lacks diversity, one that can't connect with the very diverse Commonwealth, one that many young people in Britain don't see themselves in. And for Meghan, the brief time that she was in the royal institution, she did challenge the connotation that to be regal and royal was to be white, and now we've kind of gone back to that.

Which brings us to the younger royals, even though now they're in their 40s, William and Catherine. William, to me, was the revelation of this book. You talk about how you have seen him firsthand change from the person you first met over a decade ago. What's changed about him?

The book goes into the duality of William's character and I think that change should be applauded and welcomed, particularly for someone that is on this path to thronedom since birth. We want to see him grow up. We want to see him become more mature, more serious about the role. Five, six years ago, the press in the UK were calling him “work-shy Will,” so the change was needed. But I think along the way there has been almost this kind of hardening of William too, a man that's sort of given into the company role, the institutional way of doing things. Unfortunately today, the institutional way of doing things includes things that he perhaps would never have got involved in earlier on in his life.

A man that hated the press, a man that never wanted to play the games that tore his parents apart, we see and hear in the book is now part of his way of life. Private secretaries that will leak private details about his relationship with his brother to make him look better. PR activations. When Harry was caught flying in private jets, William flew on a cheap budget commercial flight just a couple of days later. All of these things have hammered on the fractures between William and his brother and led to what has been this breakdown of this relationship.

He may be excelling at the role, and I do think he's doing a good job. When you talk to people connected to Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace within it, past and present, they're all very excited about him. They talk about him as the true successor, that Charles is just sort of the bridge to get there. But I think with William, there has been this change where I've seen just a kind of hardening of him perhaps being number to the things that go on around him. Everyone's different, but I think one day he will become the head of the Church of England, so it's important to talk about and question the actions, the morals, the behaviors of an individual that will take on what is essentially a holy role.

Let's talk about the person who is the current head of the Church of England. When we talk about a transition, it's a transition that could last two decades. Where do you see Charles in all this? Because he is also not always in lockstep with William either. He has his own conflicts with his son, not just Harry. He has his own jealousies and competitiveness with the family. 

You used the term “lockstep.” It's one that the palace would often roll out in press briefings to journalists including myself, that “Father and son were working in lockstep with one another.” This was whilst the queen was alive and leading up to her death and the transition to Charles as monarch. I don't see that lockstep anymore. I see two people with very different agendas, very different outlooks to the role in which they want to do things. A lot of that comes down to the fact that, as you say, King Charles is positioned as the transitional monarch. It's very telling that even aides at Buckingham Palace refer to him even to the likes of The Times of London in their press briefings as the “caretaker king.” People that I spoke to refer to him as the “bridge” to the true successor. That creates a very unusual power dynamic within the institution for someone who is the monarch, who is the head of state, to receive less support than the person chomping at the bit for that role.

We've seen it come out, glimpses here and there. Just after the coronation, Kensington Palace briefed a number of journalists that when William becomes king, he'll do it differently, that his coronation will be more mindful of the economic climate, that it will be more cost-effective, that it will be less traditional and more modern-facing. We heard William talk in Singapore just a few weeks ago that when he does work, he hopes that he'll have tangible results and real impact that perhaps in the past things have only been highlighted or supported. That's a bit of a diss to his father, who probably I would argue, has done more in any kind of advocacy when you look at his environmental work than any of the royal family members put together.

Even when the queen was alive at Buckingham Palace, a lot of the people in the queen's household did not feel that Charles had the minerals or the moxie to take on the role. So far we're a year in, he's actually steered the ship pretty well. I can't say that he's put a foot wrong, but in terms of that much-needed change, that modernization, the acknowledgement and accountability of things of the past, things that need to be faced in the future, I don't see that happening, or at least on the horizon.

When books like this come out and address these issues or at least line them up so we can look at them and talk about them rather than welcoming the conversation, the palace will activate any kind of agenda or media tactics to ensure that these things are silenced or ignored. Today as I talk to you, the front page of one of the newspapers says that William's friends have branded this entire book a conspiracy theory. Well, firstly, no one's read it yet, but secondly, you only need to see the names and the conversations that are in the book to know that this is based on what's actually happened, not what I think has happened.

When we look at William and his own children, we know George is only 10 and he has two "spares." What happens now that he knows what it feels like to be raised in a family where you are regarded differently because of your place in the family? Do you think that he and Catherine are raising their children differently, that there is an awareness of that kind of competitiveness and the divisiveness that can happen between siblings?

I think it's clear if you speak to anyone that's in the orbit of the Waleses that they are caring and carefully considerate parents when it comes to raising their children. I think of these moves that they've made to send them all to the same school and live slightly outside of the fray of London so they can have a more "normal" environment. Ultimately the end of the day, carefully as William and Kate will try and shield Charlotte and Louis from the realities of being the spares, in the eyes of the institution, you're always going to be lesser than. Hierarchy is more important than anything else. There is no equality in the royal family. Listen, maybe it's a bit like that in any family, but I think the difference is that the privilege and the path that George is on is very different to his siblings. As much as the couple might try and protect them from that, I don't know how the realities of that situation will pan out. We can only hope for the best.

I sat with someone that spent many years working with William, including the early years of the births of his first children. I said, “Do you think that the release of “Spare” and everything that Harry said about growing up feeling like number two, less important, ignored, not as prioritized as someone, has that changed the couple's focus?” And the answer was very dismissive. It was like, “Well, Harry's very different” and he hasn't really read the book. So, are they listening? Who knows? The evidence shows us that they're not.

I think that as parents, they're doing the best they can, but this is a family that is often doing the best it can just to get along with each other. There are also several dozen other people in the royal households around them that also want to have a say, want to play a role in all of these decisions and movements that happen over the years ahead.

It's a family, but it's also a business, and it is a big, big, big business. Which brings us to the question that you begin and end with. What happens now? Maybe it's time to really reassess why we have this monarchy. The Commonwealth nations are certainly reassessing where they want to be in relation to that institution. Yet you say it's not going anywhere. Why?

I think when you look at the 14 remaining commonwealth realms that all have currently King Charles as their monarch, for them breaking away from the royal family is an essential step for them to find independence that started from the days of colonialism. This is a path towards graduation that I think was always expected. But within Britain it's not as clear-cut as that. The royal family is embedded into every facet of society. Our legal system, our postal service, everything is connected to the royal family. So to untangle that, which would involve a referendum, and I certainly don't think we're at that point, would be a mammoth task.

People ask why I called it “Endgame.” I'm not saying this is the end. I think it's quite unlikely that we'll see a future without the royal family. But I think that we've reached a really important moment where the end of the monarchy as we know it is a possibility. You only need to look at the European monarchies and how they have gone from great prominence and importance, not just in their own country but on the world stage, to now fading into insignificance or no funding or just becoming tourist attractions.

These are realities that the British royal family do need to face and talk about. To ignore it will only lead to a faster demise of things as they are. I also see a world in which there is great use for a royal family, an apolitical system that is supposedly above the fray, that in times of social, economic woes in our country or whatever crises we're going through, we have a stable system, a head of state that can unify us. The queen did a great job of that, but I don't see much of a chance of that happening with things as the way they are until they're tackled.