{"id":3843,"date":"2023-11-30T16:47:52","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T23:47:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/?p=3843"},"modified":"2024-08-08T11:11:54","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T18:11:54","slug":"book-reviews-spare-and-endgame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/?p=3843","title":{"rendered":"Book reviews: Spare and Endgame"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At the rate royal \u201cbombshells\u201d drop, one might imagine Buckingham Palace a smoking crater of charred ruins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after years of drama, not only do all the grand old piles in the British royal family\u2019s vast portfolio of real estate still stand, but the royal machinery that sustains them isn\u2019t even dinged. And that\u2019s because all the smoke and dazzle is part of a calculated strategy, a show cooked up in concert between \u201cthe Firm\u201d and the tabloids that profit from royal clickbait. The gossipy headlines generate profit for the papers, sustain public interest in Britain\u2019s royal family, and provide a useful way to punish members who don\u2019t toe the institutional line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prince Harry\u2019s biography Spare<\/em> became the fastest-selling nonfiction book of all time and generated countless media headlines. Omid Scobie\u2019s Endgame<\/em> is currently providing chum for another tabloid feeding frenzy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But ironically, both books are packed with stories the tabloids won\u2019t repeat, because they illuminate too much of the \u201cinvisible contract\u201d between palace and press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In probably the best coverage of Spare<\/em>, Zeynep Tufekci wrote for the New York Times<\/a>: \u201cAny close follower of the British media should not have been surprised that after Prince Harry fell in love with Meghan Markle, the biracial American actress, years of vitriolic, even racist coverage followed. Whipping hatred and spreading lies \u2014 including on issues far more consequential than a royal romance \u2014 is a specialty of Britain\u2019s atrocious but politically influential tabloids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“People like me, uninterested in celebrities, shouldn\u2019t dismiss the brouhaha around Harry\u2019s memoir as mere celebrity tittle-tattle. He has made credible, even documented claims that his own family refused to stand up against their ugly, sustained attacks against Meghan. In other words, it appears that Britain\u2019s most revered institution, funded by tens of millions in taxpayer funds annually, plays ball with one of its most revolting institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“At the very least, it seems clear by now where some senior members of the royal family position themselves in all this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Endgame<\/em> goes even farther than Spare<\/em> in detailing the often sordid workings of the invisible contract between journos and courtiers. Scobie details how Christian Jones, Prince William\u2019s communications secretary, fed negative stories about the Sussexes to Dan Wootton at The<\/em> Sun<\/em> in exchange for burying another story that might have been highly damaging to the heir: reports of private dinners and a \u201crural rivalry\u201d that hinted at an affair between Prince William and Rose Hanbury, the Marchioness of Cholmondeley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No proof or confirmation of that royal affair was ever provided, because after Jones\u2019s intervention, those articles were comprehensively scrubbed from The <\/em>Sun<\/em>\u2019s website. Instead, the paper was apparently allowed to break the story of what it would call \u201cMegxit\u201d: Harry and Meghan\u2019s desire to separate themselves from the Firm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to both Endgame<\/em> and a report<\/a> by the Byline Times<\/em>, when Harry pursued legal action against The Sun<\/em>, he was punished by the withdrawal of his official security. (It\u2019s worth noting that the disgraced Prince Andrew is still provided security, despite having a much lower threat profile than Harry.) Scobie quotes a source as saying: \u201cI have never<\/em> seen the Palace circle the wagons like they did with Christian.\u201d Byline Times<\/em> also quotes a source: \u201cThey threatened the removal of the funding to try and protect the royal household from a potential courtroom scandal with Jones and Wootton very publicly at the centre.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why would the Firm pull out all the stops to protect a courtier, even if it meant putting the monarch\u2019s own second son in real and immediate danger?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because Jones is merely a flunky for Prince William, and it\u2019s hard to imagine that Jones\u2019s press machinations were conducted without the approval of his \u201cprincipal.\u201d Indeed, he wasn\u2019t William\u2019s only communications secretary to openly collude with the tabloids against Harry and Meghan: another highly placed aide, Jason Knauf, gave testimony on behalf of the Daily Mail<\/em> in a case brought against it by the Duchess of Sussex, regarding the leak of a private letter. (Despite the attempted sabotage from William\u2019s camp, she won that case and was awarded a front page correction and a large settlement.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The details of all this sordidness \u2014 the sacrifice of Harry and Meghan on the altar of tabloid drama, with obsidian knives wielded by Harry\u2019s own closest kin in an attempt to secure more favorable coverage for themselves \u2014 form the narrative backbone of both books. And William isn\u2019t the only one implicated in the matter: Queen Camilla emerges as a canny and ruthless operator, buying the rehabilitation of her own image with the coin of gossip leaked against both her stepsons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn a funny way I even wanted Camilla to be happy,\u201d Harry writes. \u201cMaybe she\u2019d be less dangerous if she was happy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s pretty hard to tell if anyone\u2019s happy in Britain\u2019s royal family. Endgame<\/em> tells us that Charles is jealous of William, that William is jealous of Harry, and that Harry will probably never get any of the remorse he\u2019d like to see for the way he and his wife were thrown to the wolves. Hating Harry \u2014 and even more so, Meghan \u2014 has become its own lucrative, self-sustaining industry. Literally hundreds of negative articles are published about the two every day<\/em>. It\u2019s a relentless, often racist onslaught of character assassination that exploits the same culture-war fissures that drove Brexit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spare<\/em> mostly comes off as a good-faith effort from a deeply weird person to explain to the rest of us why he\u2019s like this. Endgame<\/em> isn\u2019t as well-written or compelling, but it backs up a lot of what Harry puts into generalizations with names, dates, and specifics. Together, they paint a very damning portrait of two rotten institutions propping each other up at the people\u2019s expense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But by and large, you won\u2019t read about that in the press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the rate royal \u201cbombshells\u201d drop, one might imagine Buckingham Palace a smoking crater of charred ruins. But after years of drama, not only do all the grand old piles in the British royal family\u2019s vast portfolio of real estate still stand, but the royal machinery that sustains them isn\u2019t even dinged. And that\u2019s because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3843"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3843"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3859,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3843\/revisions\/3859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shannon.users.sonic.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}