As we covered previously, Omid Scobie’s Endgame had a pretty good rundown of how the Prince William-Rose Hanbury story played out from a media perspective. As in, Dan Wootton (then the Sun’s entertainment editor) broke the “rural rival” story, then Wootton also broke the story about William and Rose’s “private dinners,” a story which was quickly edited and eventually erased completely. Throughout the months the Sun was hotly pursuing the story, William’s press secretary Christian Jones was freaking out about Wootton’s exclusives… until Jones suddenly wasn’t freaked out at all. The spring/summer of 2019, the Sun suddenly buried the Rose story and had a rash of negative Sussex stories. A deal had been made, and Christian Jones threw the Sussexes to the wolves, all to protect William. William knew exactly what was being done too. Thus began the blatant transactional deal between Kensington Palace and Dan Wootton, which led to Wootton breaking the “Sussexit” story in January 2020.
Christian Jones was desperate to stop the Rose rumors: When rumors about Prince William and gossip about Kate’s “fallout” with Rose Hanbury flooded social media feeds and American tabloid magazines in 2019, Kensington Palace press secretary Christian Jones…pulled out all the stops to get The Sun—the first outlet to allude to the gossip—to stop poking around in the detritus of the rumor and back off. Crises such as these require more than just strategic briefing, which drops us right into the third media relationship: tactics that teeter on the edge of ethical boundaries, and in some cases run right past them.
Jones tried to rope Omid Scobie into the dealmaking: “Christian was desperate to stop [the rumor] and made it his mission to do so,” a former courtier told me. Jones even tried to include me in his attempts. While the tabloid continued to dig around on the story, even sending a reporter to canvass Hanbury’s home in Norfolk, Jones—who had already admitted to me that the paper’s persistence was stressing him out—suggested that I connect with the journalist behind the initial reports—The Sun’s “showbiz” editor Dan Wootton. Christian clearly wanted to give Wootton something in exchange for standing down on the rumors. If he promised Wootton scoops from elsewhere, maybe The Sun would do him a solid. As for my supposed gain from this, Jones claimed, it would be a “great move” to help promote Finding Freedom before it was launched in August. “He would be helpful,” Jones wrote in a late-night text. “I reckon a story [from your book] to Dan that goes in The Sun, and then he goes on [morning TV show] Lorraine [to talk about it].”
Scobie was already aware of Jones’s relationship with Wootton: At this point I was already aware and dubious of the triad relationship between Jones, Callum Stephens (his partner and PR executive), and Wootton. I had zero interest in collaborating with the tabloid and Wootton, let alone with a notorious hack best known for bullying and hounding celebrities, including the late Love Island UK host Caroline Flack (who Prince Harry was romantically linked to in 2009), as well as a long list of worrying allegations, including blackmail, coercion and other repulsive acts…
The shift in coverage at The Sun: It was soon clear my book was not the only carrot Jones would dangle in front of his pal at The Sun. In late June the paper suddenly pulled reporters off the hunt and then dropped digs into the story entirely. “Christian helped make it end,” one high-level courtier told me. Curiously, Wootton and the paper—which does not have a reputation for giving up on potential scoops—shifted their focus to a series of revealing stories about the Sussexes. For Prince Harry and some other Palace staff, including one who was confiding in me at the time, the timing of this shift was dubious.
Jones blatantly leaked the Sussexit story to Wootton: For this book, several separate sources—including two Sun staffers—confirmed that Jones helped provide details to The Sun about the Sussexes’ move to Canada and their decision to step back from royal life. “Leaks got really obvious toward the end,” a senior ranking courtier confided to me. When Harry and Meghan’s head of communications Sara Latham sat down with Jones and Prince Charles’s press secretary Julian Payne in January 2020 to prepare a joint statement from Buckingham Palace confirming the couple’s official departure, details about it leaked to the newspaper while they were still working on the draft. “They hadn’t even spoken to anyone at that point and Dan [Wootton] was already calling her to ask for comment about details in the statement . . . It felt like Christian had literally been texting him under the table.”
[From Omid Scobie’s Endgame]
That last quote made me shudder – “It felt like Christian had literally been texting him under the table.” The way Charles and William have always operated, it’s like Harry never had anywhere safe. This was arguably one of the most tense, heated and delicate situations the Windsors had faced in several decades, and instead of doing a close-hold lockdown on information, the then-second in line to the throne had surrounded himself with the sleaziest opportunists out there and everything turned into a clownshow. Jones utterly f–ked it up, and even worse, Jones never really had to face any accountability for it.
Scobie also pieces together this Christian Jones information with Prince Harry’s story in Spare, where he and William went off and had a big talk after the Sandringham Summit, and Harry told William about his concerns about a member of William’s staff selling information about the Sussexes to the tabloids. Harry claimed that William was receptive to what Harry said and William said “Yeah, we’ve also got our suspicions.” Three months after that conversation, William promoted Christian Jones from press secretary to personal private secretary.
Photos courtesy of Getty, Cover Images.
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Interesting and confirms what everyone knows, the paps are on record saying that KP briefed them – Twitter has the receipts.
Will be interesting to see how Chuck and Peggy react to this. I think Cams will leak about a Wails divorce or legal separation.
Yep. Because none of them can think for further ahead than 5 minutes and know that the others are not trustworthy, they’re just going to start leaking stuff to get ahead of each other and it’s going to be way more than what was in Endgame. The fact that they keep doing this with every non sycophantic release, instead of just putting their heads down for a month or so is mind boggling. Going to be interesting leading up to this Carol concert and the Christmas walk.
Yes, I’m wondering what would be loud and explosive enough to shift all these revelations off the front pages.
It usually takes the RF a couple of days to react. By tomorrow, they will probably try to do something to refocus all the attention. If that doesn’t work, I would guess that they’d just go silent and try to regroup with Christmas charity initiatives or have something waiting in the New Year. Technically this would be the time for the them to behave as boring as possible.
On Twitter they’re already hyping Kate’s “revenge dress” she’ll be wearing to tonight’s concert or whatever. Revenge for being outed as a racist, I suppose? Anyway, quite telling that they think the commensurate response to “the future queen of England was disgustingly racist about her own nephew, do you really think she cares about the rest of you?” is simply “look at the pretty dress!” I feel like they really don’t get the gravitas of the exposure, maybe not in the UK but certainly in majority POC commonwealth countries.
MY tinfoil tiara theory: William gets into drugs and alcohol filled orgies with all these men. That’s the big secret everyone is afraid of coming out.
Heehee. Mine too!
Was just thinking the same thing. William could save himself right now if he just admitted his true nature. Married for pressure, time to become who he was meant to be, the first openly gay Prince of Wales.
And then he left KP to join some big PR firm. I think KP realised that Christian Jones couldn’t stay because it would implicate William.
I wonder if they are always leaking about worrying that PH will secretly record them because that is their MO. It wouldn’t be surprising to even hear that some of these meetings were recorded by courtiers.
I wonder that as well, Equality. Since the Oprah interview and learning about the invisible contract, it seems like the various parts of the RF try to use certain techniques to throw each other under the bus all the time.
As to CJ, instead of texting under the table, he could just as well have called somebody so they could listen to the conversation in real time and react accordingly.
This is so bad. It’s so clear what William was doing to his brother and yet this part of the book is not getting enough attention in the BM. I really wish that a lot of tabloid readers in the UK would read this book. It would be eye-opening.
We all knew this was exactly what was happening in real time, but to have it solidly confirmed by Omid is WILD. William is absolute scum.
This is what I was hoping the book would do. Are there any massive breaking news stories that we weren’t aware of? No, and I never expected there to be, not for those of us who have been watching closely. What I wanted was a coherent narrative from someone who was there watching it happen. Thank you Omid.
If we only had a Carolingian Shakespeare!
What he would make of all the intrigues, betrayals and cabals at KP, CH, BP.
Just imagine a tragicomedy called Bulliam of Londinium, where the main creep is always incandescent, and is finally unalived by someone with an iron peg.
With a sideshow of characters like the Fly, Bee, Wasp, some loudmouth seamstress called AK-47, a scribe called Knob (the German word Knauf means either [door] knob or [sword] pommel), a town crier jonesing for more influence, a chavette keen on emulating a wisteria, a talking horse, a doddering fat-fingered vulgarian for a clan chief, and an obsessed Moron with ESP (because he doesn’t know anybody who owns a listening device)
The family’s rose wouldn’t be white like York’s, or red like the Tudor one, but green, for envy.
I’m laughing so hard. Seems like you’re capable of writing it yourself.
ya, you’re the Shakespeare, @Nanea
With the level of incompetence shown by this lot, William’s big secret could be dark and huge, or a complete nothingburger. Just courtiers jumping all over themselves to show how utterly loyal they are, causing more damage than honesty would have. William is a nasty dude, it’s just that having to reflexively cover everything up can lead to strange unforced error.
At this point, I’m leaning toward nothingburger. Something the royal cohort and their enablers considers egregious, but the rest of the world cares not a whit about. Maybe not as minor as using the wrong fork for the fish course while dining with the monarch, but in that ballpark.
I prefer to think it’s something seismic because I want that f***er William to crash and burn.
Pegs and his court are desperate to cover for him. I suspect Peg’s big, dark secret involves either 1) a dead woman, 2) a live boy, 3) or repeated group sex with kinky men.
I assume Omid is smart enough to have kept all the texts between him and Jones, so I cannot understand why he doesn’t talk about this in every interview – especially the live ones – on the book promo. It’s such a clear example of KP deliberately planting stories to protect William by throwing Harry and Meghan under the bus. He was live on Good Morning Britain today and it was the perfect opportunity to expose the unscrupulous dealings but he chose not to. Omid is strident in trying to talk about the unhealthy relationship between the institution and the press, yet when he has a headline grabbing opportunity to do so he holds back. It baffles me.
I am almost done with the book and he seems to be hardest on Charles and light on Incandescent and Keen. Not sure why.
Charles is in charge and has been for quite a while, even when Liz was Queen.
Because they are the future. Charles is halfway out the door.
But what was so bad for Peg that they had to throw Harry and Meg under the bus. Rumors of an affair with Rose seem pretty tame. After all Chuckles had affairs that were known. Exactly who was Peg having the affair with? Was it Roses husband? Was it Rose? Was it Both? What was it ? All of this chaos and leaking for an affair?
I would believe it were anything from a nontraditional affair to several love children to accidental fatalities from nights of debauchery gone too far, but honestly at this point given what we’ve seen of Will’s character, I would also believe it was absolutely nothing. Will would absolutely have gone scorched earth and tried to destroy Harry simply for the crime of being his better. This all started because Will’s fragile egg of an ego couldn’t handle his brother outgrowing him. Harry has successful projects, he somehow always says the right thing in a crowd and everyone loves him while Will is always painfully awkward and he knows it. Harry gets real laughs, genuine love, and Will only inspires sychophancy, and I think it enrages him; and then the worst crime of all, Harry lands Meghan, Will’s fantasy from his favorite tv show. No, he absolutely could not stand to be dragged in the media at a time when he was feeling his absolute lowest. Destroying what he envied most was the only thing that would make him feel superior again. Yea, I buy that he’d do all this just for a simple affair, or the appearance of one.
That’s an interesting point. How would it explain the comment that our eyes would bleed if we knew the truth about William?
Well done, Sunday. Best analysis of the situation that I have seen yet.
I think you are right. He would have found any incident to justify throwing Harry under the bus. He wanted to destroy both of them out of pure jealousy. He is the worst.
@Teagirl Personally, if billions of my tax dollars and the global reputation of my country were in the hands of someone whose charitable family man image was exposed as a total farce and he was instead revealed as a cheating cad with the intelligence and impulse control of a teenager, someone with zero redeeming qualities who instantly sours any conversation he’s a part of and any room he walks into, someone ugly in person and in spirit, someone hateful and racist and incurious and intolerant and selfish and greedy and egotistical and just plain stupid and incompetent, and yet I knew that this person would be adulated, praised, and privileged for a good chunk of the rest of my life as he fills his pockets off my hard work, my eyes would absolutely bleed.
William’s entire PR brand is ‘better than Papa because I don’t cheat’. William has accomplished nothing, is incredibly lazy and spendthrift. All he has is the fake image of a faithful husband. I also suspect, even though there is no legal pre-nup? There is some financial deal behind the scenes regarding a divorce from Kate. If he’s caught publicly cheating, Keen gets more money than she ordinarily would. See William paying a big chunk of the Midds post-wedding home.
He is desperate to be seen as better than Charles. He won’t work harder, he won’t commit to any quality work. But he wants his eventual divorce to read as ‘two uni friends who grew apart and are happily coparenting’. Not ‘man who cheated for 20 years has to pay his own personal money out for his wife’s lifelong support’. Kate has no claim on Duchy funds, just as Diana didn’t. William doesn’t want her getting any more of his personal inheritance from Diana or any of his big payout from the tabloids.
Do you really thinks Pegs & Wigs will divorce and thereby making the Sussexes look good?
I think William would _________________(fill in the blank) a million times then twice on Sundays before he would do or allow anything to happen that would make the Sussexes look good.
I don’t think it needs to be more than not wanting the affair to go public. Those years he was still leaning into the “family man” persona and if it had come out it would have made people think he was very much like his father, the adulterer. And it’s clear William wants to set himself as apart from Charles as possible.
Endgame is Harry’s reserve 400 pages made public.
No, this is Omid’s experience. What he’s pieced together from publicly-available info. What he personally experienced when they tried to hook him into this whole abusive, endangering episode of revealing the Sussex whereabouts and plans.
Harry’s deleted 400 pages will be far more damning and filled with Harry’s personal experiences of who really said what directly to Harry and Meghan.
Harry, please publish those other pages, you have nothing to lose now because who would want anything to do with your dogsht British family. The spencers YES they have supported you and Megan, but the Windsors! They are nothing more than freelance contributors to every paper you can name!! Your brother is a disgusting, jealous, sanctimonious BSD married to his female equivalent and your father? Your father is a national disgrace and has no place on the throne. That’s if a throne should even exist in this day and age! They should all hang their bloody heads but they won’t. They will do what they always do, circle their jaguars and Daimlers (THEIR WAGONS), push skank out in a new dress and wiglet and hope we all forget about it, and the bloody press will help them. Because there is not a single reporter or editor to actually print the truth. That the left behind Royals are grifting adulterous scum, with less morals than an alley cat.
The thing that always stood out to me is when you see Christine Jones, Jason Knauf, and a bearded Prince William they can be mistaken for the same person. Maybe it’s a cross racial thing, but they look like a certain type of person in a particular dating pool.
The thing that always stood out to me is when you see Christine Jones, Jason, Knauf, Christian Jones and a bearded Prince William they can be mistaken for the same person. Maybe it’s a cross racial thing, but they look like a certain type of person in a particular dating pool.
I think the best parts of the book are this one, where Scobie puts things we already knew in order, and the chapter on the media.
I loved that he mentioned the Spare conversation because even back in January I was sure that William was lying to Harry then and it’s nice to have confirmation.
Kaiser, I got chills while reading your line about Harry never being safe around Charles and William. It’s crazy to realize that he was safer in a war zone!
I know some people think William’s “big dark secret” is worse than just an affair with Rose which seems tame in comparison to whatever else it could be. But we have to remember William came of age when both his parents were cheating on each other. Charles was in love with someone else from the get go and that must have led to some very dysfunctional parenting. William was 11 when the story of his father’s affair was blown out into the open, he would remember that and how excruciating those years must have been. Then his mother’s interview with Martin Bashir dredged it all up again. It was the period of the “The War of the Waleses.” Charles and Camilla were a HUGE story, Diana doing that interview was an even bigger story. And oh, let’s not forget Diana’s book! William has always been determined not to emulate his parents’ story, but he failed from day one by giving Kate his mother’s engagement ring.
William has been adamant of being different from his father in every single way, including being seen as the doting husband and father, something his father never was. He does not want the “Like father, like son” expression to apply to him but… we know it does. He knows what the affair story, if true, would do to his kids. Louis is still young but Charlotte and George are old enough to know what’s going on. He is desperate not to be seen as a cheating husband and father like his dad was and I think he would do anything to avoid it, including leaking stories about the Sussexes to the media.
VilleRose, you know what the punch line is to this? I don’t think people would be all that negative about an affair. Cant has done herself a huge disservice by being the no work Princess and Duchess. She is nothing more than a dress form for the material to be draped onto. That may be what the brf wants her to be, but it doesn’t connect to people. It doesn’t give people anything they can point to and see part of Cant. You can say something about her early years, but let’s be realistic. One meeting a year to say ‘aren’t I great’ isn’t something that satisfies anyone. If a separation is announced with a probable divorce to follow, no one will care. Well, maybe the pad bots, but they don’t count.
The 3 kids are quite likely already living with their parents’ separation. A formal separation doesn’t change anything. Neither will a divorce.
In the years since then he has been programmed more effectively though. He called Di paranoid and quite likely sees her actions of talking as more wrong than the affair. Does he care about how it affects the children or just how it looks to them? If he truly cared how it affected them the answer is to keep it in his pants. Most children would probably do better with a divorce where the parents are civil to each other than to a continued marriage where they can’t manage to not have “pillow fights” and yell and throw things.