Prince Harry and King Charles ‘Do n’t Speak Much, if at All’: Source

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Charles can’t forgive Harry’s attacks on Camilla

Prince Harry and King Charles are reportedly barely speaking as the king continues to harbor resentment at his son for his attacks on his wife, Queen Camilla, made in Harry’s book Spare. In an article for the Daily Telegraph, that paper’s associate editor Camilla Tominey cites a “well-placed insider” as saying: “Communications between the king and Prince Harry remain pretty poor. They don’t speak much, if at all.”

Tominey says Charles doesn’t use text or WhatsApp, and would, in happier times, “schedule a call with both of his sons on a Sunday—but while he still converses weekly with (Prince) William, there is remarkably little contact with his other ‘darling boy.’”

Charles is still furious about Harry’s savage attacks on Camilla in his book where he cast as her as ambitious and ruthless and prepared to “sacrifice” him for her own ends.

A source is quoted as saying: “If there’s one thing that winds that man up, then it’s attacks on his wife. He’s very defensive of Camilla.” The source adds that William isn’t too delighted with his brother either: “Both [William and Charles] know that they’ve brought their wives into an institution that has required them to make huge sacrifices. Negative press coverage is one thing, but they don’t expect members of their own family to stick the boot in.”

Tominey also says the palace are not happy about the prospect of another round of court cases against the “British media—and by association, the palace” that Harry has in the pipeline. Tominey writes: “He is currently taking action against News Group Newspapers, the publishers of The Sun and the defunct News of the World, and Associated Newspapers, the publishers of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Mail Online, and Reach plc, formerly Mirror Group Newspapers, for allegedly illegally obtaining information. He has repeatedly accused the palace of conspiring with the press to brief against him, and trials due to start in the New Year are likely to heap further embarrassment on the king.”

The piece also has some half-hearted push back from the palace about a Byline News report last week, which claimed Harry and Meghan Markle were stripped of their allowance in retaliation for them naming a palace aide whose partner they claimed first leaked the story about them moving to Canada to the Sun. The Telegraph says, rather vaguely, that the late Queen Elizabeth and Charles removed the financing because they became “rather fed up” that the couple “seemed to want to have their cake and eat it.”

Cost of doing business

There is a slim possibility that we could finally find out how much Britain spends on protecting members of the royal family. British newspaper the Guardian will on Wednesday ask for “the total bill for the round-the-clock measures, such as armed bodyguards and patrols at their many homes” over three years between 2017 and 2020 to be released. The Home Office doesn’t want to release the number, saying it “would pose an unacceptable threat to national security.”

Scobie: the dramaaaaa!

Prince William is “power-hungry” and King Charles “unpopular,” according to the promotional material being used by Omid Scobie to plug his new book. Scobie is the co-author of Finding Freedom, the biography of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle that was widely viewed as their perspective on Megxit, and various royal family fights and controversies.

The Mail on Sunday reports that the Amazon blurb for his new book, Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival (to be published Nov. 28) reads that it is “a penetrating investigation into the current state of the British monarchy—an unpopular king, a power-hungry heir to the throne, a queen willing to go to dangerous lengths to preserve her image and a prince forced to start a new life after being betrayed by his own family.”

Quite what Scobie will reveal, or dish that is new is unknown. The chapter headings are très dramatique! The include: “Shaky Ground: The Queen is Dead, the Monarchy Faces Trouble,” “The Fall of Prince Andrew: Scandal, Shame and Silencing Jane Doe,” “Race and the Royals: Institutional Bigotry and Denial,” “Gloves On: Prince William, Heir to the Throne,” and “Gloves Off: Prince Harry, Man on a Mission.”

A source told the Mail on Sunday: “I've been told this is bad, very bad. It is unlikely that Royal aides will comment, but if there are charges of racism, they will, of course, be robustly rebutted.”

The Mail on Sunday says the book will be serialized in a major US magazine, but not in the UK. A publishing source in America told the Mail: “The word is this is going to have bombshell after bombshell. Some are even speculating it may name the person who questioned what color Archie’s skin would be. Everyone knows Omid is the Sussexes' unofficial mouthpiece, so it’s fair to say there will be a huge deal of interest in this book on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Whither Meghan’s big relaunch?

The question of what has happened to Meghan Markle’s mooted relaunch preoccupies Britain’s Sunday Times this weekend. The Times notes that reports of “a big-bucks deal with Amazon’s Audible” have turned out to be “bunkum” and cites a Los Angeles media insider as saying: “Most businesses would hesitate to work with the Sussexes after the chaos that was Spotify.”

The article quotes British writer Tom Bower as saying Meghan is writing a memoir herself: “There will be a readership for it because she’ll undoubtedly settle some scores from her point of view….What she says she said to the queen, to Kate (Middleton), to (Prince) Philip, all that will be in the book whether corroborated or not, and that’s a goldmine.”

The Times says, however, that a spokesperson for the duchess denied that she was working on a memoir.

Graydon Carter, the founder and co-editor of Air Mail and former editor of Vanity Fair, meanwhile, tells the paper he “would measure the duration of the marriage in years rather than decades,” adding: “I think she has run rings around poor Harry and gotten what she wanted: notoriety, money, and a title. His usefulness to her diminishes daily.”

Nor is Carter sure about a much-touted idea of Meghan returning to acting in the wake of the success of Suits this year on Netflix, sniping: “If there is a Real Housewives of Montecito show in the works, she’d be a shoo-in.”

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Fergie thanks her kids for helping her in cancer fight

Sarah Ferguson has paid tribute to her daughters and grandchildren for helping her get through breast cancer surgery. She had a mastectomy over the summer after receiving an early diagnosis during a routine screening, and has charted her experience and recovery on her podcast, Tea Talks with the Duchess and Sarah.

She told People magazine that her daughters Beatrice and Eugenie, and their children, have been crucial to her recovery, saying: “My two wonderful daughters are my wholehearted cheerleaders, my devoted champions and my soulmates, and they have been as supportive as can be, as they always are…My grandchildren have also been spectacular healers. Joy and laughter can be powerful tools when it comes to healing.”

Fergie added: “Early detection is absolutely key and might have saved my life. It [is] easy to forget to prioritize our health and proactive care. Had my dear sister not urged me to keep the appointment I almost cancelled, I might not have caught my cancer early enough to be able to treat it as effectively,” she says.

Fergie told British TV show Loose Women that she wakes up in the night panicking she is going to “get cancer somewhere else,” per the Mail.

Princess Anne is just here to talk about nature, OK?

Princess Anne gave the Telegraph an interview this week, resolutely and determinedly not about anything scandalous… but rather about the Whitley Fund for Nature, of which she has been a patron for 24 years. We discovered, gasp!, that Anne “occasionally” discusses conservation with King Charles, “but she won’t say if they always agree.”

As for where she lives (Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire), “You’ve just got to live with what’s there and make sure it doesn’t get overwhelmed. I’m not sure that rewilding at scale is necessarily a good idea—it probably is in corners, but if you’re not careful you rewild all the wrong things because they are just the things that are more successful at growing. My biggest row at home is ragwort. Lots of people think that ragwort is absolutely brilliant because butterflies love it, but it’s not good for the horses [it is toxic]. I would say don’t take all the ragwort out, just where the horses are – but it’s quite a delicate balance.”

The reporter asked Anne what she might have done as a profession in another life. Anne “laughs and looks vaguely impatient.”

“You can ask but I’ve no idea.”

Does she ever think about that?

“Not really, and it’s way too late to have those concerns—in a way the fortunate part of my life has been the broad spectrum, to see so much. Not having a very specific interest has been a bonus, I suppose. We all have ways of doing things and with Whitley it is the practical aspects of what they do, and how to support them [that has been my focus].”

Good try, Telegraph, but Anne was not going to go beyond ragwort!

This week in royal history

Happy 20th birthday to Lady Louise Windsor, daughter of Prince Edward and Sophie, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh. Lady Louise was born on Nov. 8, 2003.

Unanswered questions

What will revelations be in Omid Scobie’s book, and how explosive will it prove? Can Harry and Charles ever repair their relationship?