Yet another book about the royal family is mired in scandal. Because of a “translation error,” the names of two senior royals were published in the Dutch edition of Omid Scobie’s book, Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival.
The “translated version…purportedly reveals which senior royals allegedly made comments about the skin colour of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s first-born child,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reports.
As you may recall, this topic first came to light after Oprah Winfrey interviewed Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in March of 2021. During the conversation, “major bombshells were dropped—including that there had been discussions within the royal family about what the skin color of the couple’s son Archie Harrison would be prior to his 2019 birth.”
A month after the interview aired, the King and Markle exchanged correspondence. According to The Telegraph, the then Prince of Wales “expressed sadness over the chasm that had emerged between the two sides of the Royal family.”
In her letter, the then Duchess, apparently expressed how she had not “intended to specifically accuse the individual involved of being a racist, but was raising concerns about unconscious bias. However, it is understood that she does still consider the comment to be racist.”
And Scobie’s book appears to confirm this account. Per the salacious tell-all Dutch edition, “it was Harry’s father King Charles and sister-in-law Catherine, Princess of Wales, who made the alleged comments before his and Meghan’s son, Archie, was born in 2019.”
Scobie is frustrated about the controversy unfolding around his book, and has adamantly denied including anyone’s names. He told ITV’s This Morning, “I never submitted a book that had those names in it.”
Per Forbes, “Scobie claims the royals were named in private letters exchanged between Charles and Meghan, and Scobie maintains he did not name the royals in his English manuscript because of U.K. laws that ‘prevent me from reporting who they were.’”
Many are speculating around how this “translation error” even occurred, given that there are no names in the English version. “They appeared to have been added instead of mistranslated.”
As Saskia Peeters, a translator who worked on the Dutch edition, said “The names of the royals were there in black and white. I did not add them. I just did what I was paid to do and that was translate the book from English into Dutch.”
In the aftermath, the Dutch books with the names of the “royal racists” are now being removed from shelves of Netherlands bookstores.
Xander Uitgevers, the Dutch publishing house, is working diligently to cure this blunder, and plans to re-release the book.