The Royal Family Reportedly Used Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to Distract From Prince William's Alleged Affair

As we all get through the 416-page tome that is Omid Scobie's new book, Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy's Fight for Survival, more and more details about the royal family's machinations and expert deflection are coming to light. According to Entertainment Tonight, the author and royal expert touched on Prince William's alleged affair with Rose Hanbury, which he insists is mere speculation and tabloid fodder, but also explained that the royals used Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to draw attention away from the accusations surrounding William cheating on his wife, Kate Middleton.

"Unfortunately, if a rumor's left to kind of do its own thing it can run 20 laps around the world before you even think about what, how you want to kind of address it," Scobie told ET. "They never addressed it, so those rumors will never go away even though there's no truth to suggest that they are true."

Rumblings of the alleged affair first made headlines in April 2019, when U.K. tabloids reported that Kate was avoiding her husband at an event. Hanbury was one of Kate's closest friends, which added a layer of salaciousness to the ordeal, and she continues to be part of the royal orbit. She attended King Charles III's coronation earlier this year.

"I was very careful in the book to really focus on this, as the allegations against William, Kate's and their fallout with Rose Hanbury," Scobie said. "For legal reasons, there are so many things that one can't go into but I thought it was really important, even if a rumor is a rumor. And I really don't see proof that there is more to this than just a tittle-tattle, you know."

But what may be more telling about the whole situation is how Buckingham Palace indirectly addressed it. Though the Firm never issued a statement on the matter and netiher William nor Kate have even mentioned it publicly, Scobie says that the royals thrust drama with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle into the forefront as a diversion to the headlines claiming that things were going down between William and Rose.

"I thought it was really interesting to analyze how the palace dealt with that," Scobie added. "The worst case scenarios that they feared would happen, you know, just those rumors themselves were going to have enough impact, negatively, on William's reputation. We still see them [the rumors] trend on Twitter on a regular basis ... that's something that's incredibly damaging, I think, for William. It probably looks even worse, actually, that there was a kind of willingness to throw Harry under the bus simply to make these things disappear."

For example, Archie was born in May 2019. Almost immedately, there were stories coming out addressing alleged drama with his skin color and the royal family accepting him. A month later, Harry and Meghan announced that they would be retiring from their roles as senior royals. With that came speculation about conflict between the Big 4, which overshadowed anything that could have been said about William and Hanbury.

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