King Charles Supports an Investigation Into Andrew

29:41This is obviously extraordinary stuff, and it further undermines Andrew's defence that he put forward. So let me take you through it all step by step. Obviously, I'm sure by this point nobody really needs to be reminded of what the allegations are. but just for the record Virginia Jeffrey accused Andrew of raping her when she was a 17 year old sex trafficking victim she said that she was flown by Jeffrey Epstein and get her Maxwell over to London and then to New York and the US Virgin Islands and made to have sex with him fearing death if she refused Virginia sued Andrew in 2022 and he settled in 2022 settled out of court, paid an undisclosed sum while denying liability and he has always denied all her allegations so that is the background But let's have a look at the actual emails themselves.

30:29So this all happened in March 2011. Days earlier, Virginia did her first newspaper interview with the Mail on Sunday. That got published. It printed for the first time the famous picture, which probably you've all seen, of Andrew with his arm round Virginia Jeffrey's waist, taken in Ghislaine Maxwell's house. Maxwell is visible in the background. Jeffrey said it was taken on her disposable camera that Epstein was holding at the time. So this is the statement itself.

31:24nor did they have sex. There was no orgy in Little St. James. So this relates to, there's a little bit of explanation needed here. This relates to three allegations by Virginia. The first is London. That's when the photo was said to have been taken. The second is New York when another Epstein victim said that Gillian Maxwell presented Andrew with a puppet version of himself, which he then used to grope Virginia's breasts. And so that was a second Epstein victim who told that story, which is why there's two names there. And then Little St. James was Jeffrey Epstein's Island in the US Virgin Islands where Virginia said an orgy had taken place.

32:01So all of this had been included in this draft statement that Amanda Thirsk was suggesting be released. And because it says my home in 2001 in London, that seems to suggest the intention was that Ghislaine Maxwell would release it, not Epstein and not Andrew. Obviously, it also talks about the Duke of York in the third person. So it's definitely not her drafting a statement for Andrew to release. So she sends that. This is days after Virginia's first interview gets published. And then Andrew appears to forward that message to Epstein. And as he forwards it, this is what he writes. This is what is suggested.

32:38Make any changes that suit you both and make it relevant to your particular case. There are two competing issues to deal with. One is to clearly state that this is fabrication. and two, to distance me from any of this if you can. As is said at the bottom, we are now getting questions from the MOS as well. So that MO is Mail on Sunday, and that is indeed correct. So Amanda Thursk, she attached that draft statement, and then she added more questions coming directly to us from Mail via Ed. Ed, I think it's probably Ed Perkins, Buckingham Palace press officer. And, you know, the Mail were asking the Palace a lot of questions at the time.

33:16So where the statement says it addresses you have published a photo that's referenced to you being the male on Sunday. So this is Andrew's opportunity to say, I've never met her. If this statement had gone out, there's nothing to suggest that it actually did go out. But it was Andrew and his team that were suggesting going to Maxwell release this. And if it had gone out, it would have gone out stating that Andrew and Virginia Jeffrey met each other. and that a photo was taken when they met, now published in the media, i.e. confirming the reliability of that photograph of Andrew with his arm around Virginia's waist.

33:56Now, obviously, he suggested to the BBC that the photograph was fake and that he had never met Virginia. He didn't just say that he'd never had sex with her, as in the statement, he said he'd never met her. So let's talk about exactly what Andrew did say to the BBC. So he said, when the allegations came out originally, I went, well, that's a bit strange. I don't remember this. And then I've been through it and through it and through it over and over and over and over again. And no, nothing. It just never happened. So obviously, when somebody like Prince Andrew comes along or Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, as we now call him, and gives this detailed kind of defense or accounts of himself that's supposed to explain away all the allegations against him, one thing that's really interesting is to take that account that he's given and compare it to the kind of incontrovertible, definitive, factual evidence that we are able to find and gather, which the Epstein files released, three million documents has been brilliant for that.

34:50And so we then, as journalists, we ask ourselves, is there anything to corroborate Andrew's account? And so here we are going back to the very time when the first allegations came out, as he said, and does it support the contention that he thought, it's a bit strange, I don't remember this ever happening. And there's nothing in there to suggest that. In fact, quite the opposite. His team were effectively on the cusp of telling the public that in fact they did meet in the photo were real, albeit through Ghislaine Maxwell as an intermediary. So that is all wild in and of itself. But then you've got this fact that Amanda Thurston would not have realised at the time what was going to come of Ghislaine Maxwell.

35:33But we now know, obviously, that she's been jailed for 20 years for sex trafficking and grooming girls, specifically grooming girls for Epstein to abuse. So that was what the allegations were. It's sometimes misunderstood as having been about Ghislaine Maxwell herself sexually assaulting girls, because there was actually one narrative description of that in the evidence. But that was not the charge against Maxwell. well, the charge against Maxwell was sex trafficking. And it was that she brought these girls into Epstein's life. And then her presence helped to reassure them that Epstein was a trustworthy man.

36:07You know, her being there as a woman, she helped to kind of ingratiate them and to smooth Epstein's path to grooming these girls into accepting that they were going to be victims of horrific sexual abuse. So that was what she got jailed for. And she's serving 20 years in prison. And here we have a household staffer paid for by public money, writing a statement for her to release in an effort to exonerate Andrew. It is extraordinary stuff. And it also sheds light on the potential unexploded bomb of the actual palace email chain, you know, the emails that the palace have, because what we're getting now is only the slice of it that got forwarded onto Epstein and Maxwell, or rather predominantly Epstein, and not Not the stuff that was said privately between Andrew and his staff that Epstein and Maxwell weren't cc'd into.

36:57So there could be a whole load more emails if a situation were to arise where Andrew was being sued and there was discovery. And the second accuser who's come forward, who I've mentioned in previous episodes of this show, who was in her 20s, if she gets her case off the ground, the palace emails might come into play. So, a little bit about Virginia's original interview. So, the version that ran at the end of February in 2011 actually didn't accuse Andrew of having sex at that point. But it said that she was paid$15 ,000. No doubt, the newspaper, Gell-Maxwell references orgies and sex and so on in this draft statement.

37:40No doubt that's because of the questions that were being put to her by the mail. The actual version that was published in the first interview in February, clearly they legaled out those specific allegations out of fear of being sued. And so they don't appear in the coverage. But what it did say was that Virginia was flown across the world to meet Andrew and paid$15 ,000 to do that. And the article read, Her shocking account of her four years as Epstein's personal masseuse is supported by court documents and eyewitness photographs and flight details of Epstein's private jets. One picture said to have been taken by Epstein during Andrew's first encounter with the girl in March 2001 and published today by the Mail on Sunday shows the prince with his arm around her waist.

38:21And it quotes her talking about having had to sleep rough in her younger life and sleep with men for food, not even for money, but for food. And it quotes her as saying that she was a paedophile's dream. It then goes on to quote her talking about the night that she says she was forced to sleep with Andrew in London. And she says, Gillen served tea from a porcelain pot and biscuits. She knew Sarah Ferguson, who's obviously Andrew's ex-wife, and they talked fondly about Andrew's daughters. Then Gillen asked Andrew how old he thought I was, and he guessed 17, and they all laughed. Gillen made a joke that I was getting too old for Geoffrey.

39:01She said he'll soon have to trade her in. It was widely known that he, as in Epstein, liked young girls. so the article said they went to Tramp Nightclub in London which obviously you know this is information that has been out there for a long time we always knew it but it said they danced together and then Virginia said after about an hour and a half we drove back to Gillen's and all of us went upstairs and I asked Geoffrey to snap a picture of me with the prince I wanted something to show my mum Gillen and Geoffrey left us after that and later Andrew left in the morning And Gillen said, you did well.

39:32He had fun. We flew straight back to the States. So obviously the palace would have seen all of that and they would have known what Andrew was being accused of. And it's crazy that they would think it was a good idea to then try to get Gillen Maxwell to release a statement on their behalf. You know, not attributed to them, obviously, but that an actual royal household staffer, somebody who works for the palace, i.e. the equivalent of a White House aide, the British equivalent of a White House aide, wrote a statement to be released by somebody who is now serving 20 years in prison for sex trafficking.

40:09It's completely crazy. But, you know, this is all going to put more and more pressure on the monarchy. And at a time when they're already under a huge amount of pressure, we had just today a second incident where King Charles has been heckled. He went to Clitheroe in England and he was doing a kind of walkabout, meeting the public at a train station and somebody shouted out a question saying, how long have you known about Andrew and Epstein? The crowd were quite royalist and so they sort of booed and jeered at the heckler. But this is the second incident now. Last week as well, he was on a visit in Dedham.

40:42And again, somebody shouted out about the Epstein scandal. And then a journalist shouted a question to Charles about the Epstein scandal. We had last week, Prince Edward got asked by CNN. and he gave this slightly weird statement saying, you know, quite rightly that everyone's got to think about the victims. But then he said, who are the victims in all of this? And he left this long dramatic pause before saying there's a lot of victims, which almost sounded a little bit like he was preparing to suggest that maybe Andrew might be one of Epstein's victims, which is obviously completely absurd. But needless to say, you know, he got asked about it.

41:19This is becoming a regular thing just today. William and Kate's spokesperson broke his silence, released a statement on behalf of William and Kate saying that they were really concerned. In fact, let me actually read you the statement in full. It's short, but it's worth reading. I can confirm the Prince and Princess of Wales have been deeply concerned by the continuing revelations. Their thoughts remain focused on the victims. So there you go. I mean, William has long been thought to be the big driving force behind toughening up the palace stance on Andrew and ensuring that the monarchy really does deal with this.

41:58But of course, the monarchy is still under a huge amount of pressure, partly because the king is still currently providing Andrew with his accommodation, as well as some financial support. And there's been stories in the British papers just over the weekend saying basically that the king doesn't really feel like he can actually just definitively cut Andrew off because Andrew's vulnerable. And what would he do without the king's help? And partly, I can understand to a degree where that's coming from. I mean, it would be morally perfectly acceptable, I think, for Andrew to be cut off. But also, what does he do if you completely not just cut him off from financial support, but kind of cut the lead?

42:39You know, if you cut the lead, you have no control over him. So if you're giving him something like somewhere to live and some money, then you have some control still, because if he starts threatening to do something that's horrific and terrible, then you can say, well, we can't fund you if you're going to do that. We've got to kick you out of your house. So I can kind of understand the kind of real politic of it, the kind of pragmatic reality that if you keep him a little bit in the fold, then you can exercise power over him still. Whereas if you cast him out completely, he'll need money. What does he then do?

43:10Does he try and write a book or do interviews with major publications for money? All of that kind of thing. So I can understand where they're coming from. I can understand the thinking, but it doesn't stop it from potentially damaging the monarchy. And if this second accuser who's come forwards tries to file a civil case against him and needs to serve him papers and he's hiding out at Charles's house on the Sandringham estate, that is going to look like the monarchy is shielding him from justice. So all of this stuff is adding more and more and more pressure. And it's going to be really interesting to see where that goes.

43:43Also today, we've had another set of bombshell emails suggesting that Andrew passed confidential material from his work as a trade envoy to Jeffrey Epstein. This has been sent by Republic, the pressure group, to the police, who are now assessing this as well as the previous information from the second Andrew accuser. So they are now assessing two sets of new information about Andrew. It's all extraordinary stuff. And it happens alongside a separate kind of investigative line where the police are looking into the former British ambassador to America, Peter Mandelson, and that puts additional pressure on the police because if Peter Mandelson gets charged, the question will be, well, why aren't you charging Andrew?

44:32And part of the reason for that, part of the answer will be the government is actively cooperating with the police investigation, whereas there's been no indication yet that the palace are actively cooperating with police over Andrew. So the secondary pressure that may well start to build on the palace is to actually themselves proactively review what emails they hold, release information to the UK police as part of their investigation and start actively cooperating with police. And because if they don't then, and you know, this, the storm builds and builds and builds again. Let's say Peter manderson gets prosecuted he obviously denies all wrongdoing but let's say he does anyway um what will people then think about andrew not being prosecuted it's uh it's obviously this is not over it's gonna run and run and i will obviously keep coming back with more and more updates hello and welcome back to the show so um omid scoby who wrote finding freedom and end game big famous royal biographer has a new book out but it's not a royal biography.

45:37It's not fact. It is explicitly fiction. It is called Royal Spin. He co-wrote it with Robin Benway and it's a kind of, it's like Emily in Palace. You know, it's like a royal version of Emily in Paris. And so it's about like this American White House press officer who, her life disintegrates in America so she jumps on a plane, flies to Britain to be crashed in as a kind of crisis comms new press spokesperson for the royal family. and has various kind of romances along the way, which I will not ruin for you. But it's really, it's an interesting direction for Roman to have gone down. And one of the things that struck me most about it is that one of the main characters really feels quite a lot like Prince Harry, but is also going through, has gone through, not even going through, but has gone through a divorce from a kind of more successful wife.

46:32So that fascinated me because obviously there's been loads of kind of divorce gossip around Harry and Meghan, but also this Duke of Exeter, he's called Jasper, returns to Britain in order to kind of restart as a working royal, having, you know, had his life fall apart. So I really wanted to ask Omid whether that was deliberate, whether he wrote a book kind of theorised in part around the concept of Harry and Meghan divorcing and Harry coming home to Britain and all the gossip and the rumours and the speculation being true. And I will not spoil what he said. I'll let you wait and see for yourselves.

47:11But do have a look at the interview, because it's quite interesting. It was a very warm, friendly chat. And see what you think of the book, basically. So, Omid and Robin, thank you so much for joining me. Do you want to start by just telling me the history of this project, where it came from, and how you divided up the labour? Yeah, I mean, as you know, Jack, I spent a number of years on the Royal Bee. And, you know, during that time, your sort of imagination runs wild. And I always would kind of picture a lot of the things that we would see behind the scenes in the format of a book or a television show.

47:47and I started keeping journals and notes really since day one. And, you know, when I came to what I felt like was the end of the chapter of the Royal kind of reporting career that I was in, I really wanted to focus on telling another story against a similar backdrop to one that we're familiar with, but with a completely different cast of characters and figures. And it was actually around the time that I'd handed in the Endgame manuscript that I wanted to do something with perhaps a TV show based on the book that you've just read. And the writer's strike was on at the time. And so rather than sit on my hands, it made sense to do something more with it.

48:30And so we suddenly realized we had time for a book. Having never written fiction before, it made sense for me to kind of lean on someone that does know exactly what they're doing in this field. and you know my agent had connected me with a number of different ghost writers and authors and I think as soon as I read Robin's previous works the thing that stood out the most was just the way the rich way in which he brought to life characters not just the kind of main protagonist but like every single side character background character in this really kind of multi-dimensional way and that was exactly what I wanted for Royal Spin that it wasn't just about Laura and it was about this cast of characters in the palace and around her and so when Robin and I met it just kind of completely clicked into place and here we are So Robin, tell me about well obviously I've read the book but viewers won't have so tell me about some of these characters and it does feel, reading it, like there is some love for some of these people even the kind of villains of the palace and the kind of stiff upper lip Brits so tell me about the characters, do you have a favourite?

49:37I do have a favorite. So we have I love the idea of found family in fiction. It's one of my favorite things to write about. And I feel like in Royal Spin, we've got this sort of motley crew of characters. We have Lauren, our main character, who is working at the White House, kind of goes through a personal and professional disaster and ends up being headhunted by Buckingham Palace and ends up going to work for their PR crisis department. and um there is a like i said a motley crew of people in this office people who have done it for a very long time who are certainly let's say not necessarily open to a new way of doing things a new way of conducting the press the way they do it um and lauren is sort of fighting an uphill battle um but that's also her favorite thing to do is fight an uphill battle she enjoys a challenge i think though and i think omid and i would agree on this i think one of my favorite characters is joy she is a woman who works at the palace she has been brought in as the diversity czar so to speak a title that she's you know not exactly thrilled by the second half of that title but she just has like this joy for lack of a better word and this also this gravitas she's extremely smart and when lauren starts going up against some more dangerous decisions especially in her personal life joy is somebody who is like stop and definitely tries to help lauren as someone who's maybe a little bit older than her, but she just has like this fun spirit.

51:02She's kind of like who I want to be when I grow up, I think in a way. Great. And so it's not like, it's not a thriller, but it's like a, it's a work, it's workplace fiction with a romance twist. Is that fair to say? It's kind of like an Emily in Paris for the palace. Yes. There's definitely that kind of coming of it or second coming of age element to it in terms of Lauren's story. You know, I think we often focus on that kind of like teenage to adult coming of age but not many people or not many books sort of delve into that kind of awkward late 20s to early 30s where you're expected to have life together but you haven't quite actually figured it out and as we see with Lauren her life is seemingly together at you know before the book even starts and you know what we're seeing her is kind of rebuild that in London um but yeah you know ultimately this is about a workplace kind of ensemble and the culture clashes between Lauren and the royal institution and just kind of like British culture in general.

52:02You know, I think for me, one thing that I really wanted to do was kind of bring to life some of the areas of the palace and the working palace that we don't really ever talk about whilst we're doing the job. You know, we're always talking about the royals in front of us, but who's behind the scenes? How does it work? What actually does the back of the palace look like? And so, you know, all of those areas within the book are based on places that I found myself over the years where I'm like, oh, my God, people would be fascinated by this. You know, the Palace Cafeteria or whatever it is, just to see kind of like how the cliques work and who's sort of like ruling the roost.

52:39And, you know, how exactly does comms work? Because I think we do break it down often in our news coverage, but we don't really talk about like the politics between these characters and how much say does a comms director even have. So that's the kind of like real life aspect of this. Obviously, the people, the places, even the royal family themselves are fictionalized. But I wanted people to feel as they read it that this is Buckingham Palace come to life. and on that subject particularly of politics one thing that really fascinated me about it is it feels like the duke of exeter is very similar to the duke of sussex if i might be so bold as to point that out so which makes one aspect of it really interesting which is that so it joins the duke of exeter when he has been living in new zealand for a very long time um he works on a sheep farm there which is quite similar to harry he obviously works on a cattle ranch in australia but this particular the Duke of Exeter has just divorced his wife who was this big high-powered entrepreneur who was earning all the money and she's divorced him left him broke and so he's gone back to the palace to become a working royal again having had this period away and it's very difficult for me reading as a royal correspondent not to feel like this is like theorizing a Harry and Megan divorce?

53:59It's interesting because I did, as we wrote these characters and we wrote the stories, I thought, oh my God, what are people going to pull from this or connect to real life? And, you know, obviously I've long had a strong connection to Harry and Megan and the public eye when it comes to my royal work. And I wanted to make sure that this book didn't have any parallels with their lives. But I think if you were to really try and connect it to something, this is more the story of like what if Archie one day decides to return to the royal fold because with Jasper the Duke of Exeter his parents are that couple that broke away from the royal fold and started life somewhere else and then had children that they wanted to take a completely different path and so we're seeing what happens when one of them decides to return so I think if you had to make a connection, it would be that rather than me trying to kind of say anything about Harry and Meghan.

54:55In fact, as much as we are dealing with someone who is, I guess, in a similar sort of like position of tabloid interest as Harry, I didn't want to have those parallels with his life. I think what I would love for this book to feel like is in five years time, 10 years time, that it still feels evergreen, that we're not ripping things out of the headlines, that there isn't a Prince Andrew, that there isn't a Meghan, that there isn't, you know, a Prince William, so to speak. So the Duke of Strathairn is not Prince William? I mean, he's the heir to the throne, so it's as close to William as I guess you can get.

55:32But other than them both being white men in line to the throne, there aren't really many similarities. I tried to make sure that I wasn't leaning on things that I knew and that I was inventing, rather than trying to kind of make those mirror images of real characters. And so just to be really clear, you definitely haven't heard anything about Harry coming home because what's crazy about it is that this is the kind of big speculative rumour and gossip in royal reporting right now. It's not necessarily so much the divorce, but that Harry's going to come home because he's got his new threat assessment with the home office.

56:11You've probably deliberately been ignoring all of this noise. And trying to shield yourself from this life you used to live. But he's got this new threat assessment from the Home Office. We're expecting Harry and Meghan back in London over the summer. And there's kind of a lot of chatter about whether there might be some signs of a Harry return. Yeah, you know, obviously this book went to print some time ago. This was written long before conversations about whether Harry and Meghan would be spending more time in the UK or visiting the UK or whatever would be the outcome of his kind of security dramas within the British courts.

56:48But I think intentionally, and I think Robin feels the same, we intentionally kind of stayed away from what was happening within the real world because we didn't want that to influence any of the writing process. And I actually really struggled at the beginning to kind of realize that this is a position where, this is, you know, writing this book is a position where I can just like pick stuff out of thin air and it doesn't have to be based on something of experience. And that's something that Robin often had to do was kind of just to remind me that there doesn't need to be a who, what, where and when to this.

57:21This is a world in which you can kind of like pick and choose as you will. I have intentionally stayed away from what Harry and Meghan are up to because I just almost don't want to know. You know, it's not my job anymore. But, you know, I have kind of seen some of the more recent stories And I think that that's what's interesting about this book is that whether you read it today or in two years time, there'll always be something in it that resonates with the real royal story that's happening at that time. You know, within the book, we have the Strathans twins who are kind of only mentioned a few times throughout the books, but they're about to come of age and go off to college.

58:00And I'm sure in a couple of years time, some of the details about that will feel more relevant to what the Wales children are doing, for example. but I think that like ultimately this is kind of just following the typical patterns that we've seen over the kind of sort of 20th and 21st century when it comes to royals and the decisions that they make but ultimately this is about the people behind the scenes and you know the royals themselves are very other than Jasper are very much secondary characters it's sort of like glimpses over their shoulders rather than in front of their faces. So Robin one thing that's quite interesting i mean i don't suppose i should give too many spoilers so i won't get into i won't get i won't get into what happens at the end but i suppose what i can maybe say is um that it's quite interesting because as royal reporters there's i think and omid let me know if you agree or disagree but it feels like the primary interest is always in the royal women um first you know it's just not to say that the royal men are not interesting to people but there's so much attention and pressure on the royal women all the time.

59:07But this book really is about a female gaze on this royal man who's kind of at the centre of it, and also one of the royal correspondents as well. So what was it like to write that? Was that like a lot of fun or yeah, how was that for you? I mean, it's always fun to write, I don't want to say romance, but that initial attraction, you know, that energy between two people, whether they happen to be, you know, a Duke returning to the fold or a reporter who's trying to get the actual scoop from somebody who is trying to control what the scoop is. So I loved that just as purely as a fiction writer.

59:41I think I, when I was focusing on Lauren, especially, and when Oman and I were developing her character together, my whole thing was she was on the cusp of having it all and it all fell apart. And going back to what you were talking about initially about Jasper, the Duke of or they he was also on the cusp of having it all and it all fell apart they are just in such similar places but such different places as well and it was just I loved also as an American and writing with a Brit like a lot of Lauren's struggles to understand how the palace works to understand why we can't try something new that you know the idea of history being the rule is was really fun to explore in fiction I really I learned a lot I'll say that much about how it works behind the scenes.

1:00:28And I hope that translates into the book as well. But I think there's always that feeling when you meet someone and you're like, I don't think you're right for me, but you feel really right for me. And then Lauren experiences that twice. And she knows she is going down a path that could be quite dangerous. And everyone around her starts to realize that as well. So, I mean, you need plot in a fiction book. And anytime there's a romance with someone who may not be the right fit for you, that's a great way to do it. And so that creates obviously tension, but do you think the danger makes the romance more of an exciting prospect for the reader?

1:01:03Like, do you think the danger is part of the fun? Yeah. I mean, that's true in fiction and real life, I think. But Lauren is not always making the best decisions. And I think that was very important for both of us because you do do. I didn't want a character who was perfect because A, that's boring and B, that's not relatable. possible and so I really wanted to see Lauren making choices that maybe the reader themselves would not have made or they think that they wouldn't have made I wanted to see her struggle and have to learn from her experiences that is something that I personally went through as a woman in my late 20s and that was very important to both of us to show that this idea of again being on the cusp of having it all and losing it the idea of returning to Saturn how when you're 27, 28 years old, things tend to circle around you quite quickly.

1:01:50Yeah, I would say anytime there's a little bit of danger in the romance, it's more fun. I think it's more fun for the reader as well. And interestingly, she is respected, isn't she, by the palace? It's not a situation where you've just gone, right, she's an American coming into a stuffy old British institution, so they're all going to be evil. They're all going to hate her. James in particular does seem to have a lot of respect for her from the word go. Yes. Well, I think there is a lot of respect for Lauren because she is coming from DC, from the White House. She is known for being somebody who can move quickly, put out fires very quickly.

1:02:22But I think there's also a circle of protection around the monarchy. And I think that's where a lot of the tension comes from is not only are they scared of someone new coming in, but they're very protective of their job. One thing that Oman and I really talked a lot about was this idea of the people who work for the palace And behind the scenes, they're not doing it for the money. They're doing it for the honor of it, for the honor of working for the queen at the time in our book, at least, or for the monarchy. And I feel like that was something that we really wanted to show. It's not necessarily that they're like, you're an American, get out of here.

1:02:55But they're more very protective of what they have and what they've built. And you can see that start to Ebb away as Lauren starts to prove herself. But in the beginning, everyone's very nervous of what could happen. so omid one thing that's really interesting to me is so end game you kind of theorized like the slow death of the monarchy basically that's why it's called end game so you're coming to a situation where the queen's passed away we've got the reign of king charles the third um there's not going to be any jubilees for ages there's not going to be any more royal babies for ages and there's not going to be any royal weddings for ages and young people are standing against the monarchy and it you know it felt reading a book like the energy is draining out of the monarchy but then here you have kind of also bet again on the longevity of people's interest in monarchy as a concept so do you what do you what do you think the future holds basically for the royals both you know as an idea in fiction but also the real life monarchy as well yeah some of those parallels between our world and royal spin and real life were inevitable because regardless who the cast of characters are within the ballast, it is still going to be the same challenge of how do you keep a kind of long-standing, somewhat staid institution relevant and interesting and kind of at the center of like kind of society today.

1:04:19And so although we have a cast of characters with different troubles and problems of their own, the institution's crises and dilemmas are going to be exactly the same and you know it was one of the things that we were able to kind of explore with uh with jasper introducing jasper back into the royal fold is like what would that look like if you were to bring in kind of a more youthful element to the monarchy again how would one connect with the public again like even with the the introduction of joy as our diversities are you know you'll remember that was something that was kind of banded around by the palace for a long time and then never actually happened.

1:04:57And so this was my chance to think, okay, well, what if that actually happened and what would it bring to the institution and what would that individual face within the institution as a challenge? And I think it was kind of fun to almost play make-believe with some of these characters to almost sort of test out certain scenarios to see if it would even work, you know? And I think that this is kind of a version of that reality that the current monarchy could follow. I think ultimately one of the things that's learned within the institution when it comes to dealing with Lauren is that despite how scary it may be to entertain new ideas and doing things in a different way, the outcome isn't always going to be what was feared all along.

1:05:45It can actually result in a better connection with modern Britain. It can result in more interest from a younger generation of people. And I think it's kind of like, that was one of the things I often spoke about in Endgame, is that it wasn't me declaring the end of the monarchy, but it was saying that we had reached this pivotal moment where we can see the end of it, or we can make some really big changes, largely that involve listening to the public and what Britain needs and wants today, and seeing what that might bring in terms of longevity and a stronger future and so on. So then in that category, you've got having a kind of diversity, or somebody who's responsible for trying to make the palace more diverse.

1:06:29And then you've got, you also have press conferences in there. So is that another thing you think the Royal should have a go with? Yeah, you know, I think that we live in an era where transparency is so craved by the public, not just from members of the royal family, but from all of our publicly funded officials and figures. You know, we we don't trust the press in the same way anymore. So the written word doesn't have the same value that it once had. Anonymous source quotes are a really tired way of getting the message across. And tidy social media packaging also doesn't work. But when one is able to sit and watch a press conference and you only need to look at the White House, for example, we can kind of deduce our own summary of what is going on.

1:07:15What is the tone that is coming from the institution? What is the actual question being asked by the reporter? And listen, I'm sure there would be many people within the royal family and in the institution today that would be horrified at the idea of bringing in the press in that kind of way. But I think that there is a version of that that would actually probably go to some help, to putting out fires a little earlier on, to giving the press the access that is deserved, because as you know, it's very selective. It's very sort of pick and chosen. And a lot of the messaging that's put out these days is still via the same channels of anonymous source quotes.

1:07:55And I just don't know if that works so well anymore. Yeah, fair. So one more question for Omid is, if Harry did what the Duke of Exeter does, let's say he came back to Britain, potentially with Meghan even but came back to Britain anyway and tried to become a working royal again obviously there would be huge barriers to that happening for views of the Prince of Wales for example but would it work? Would the public give him the incredible reception that the Duke of Exit gets in the book do you think or would it be more complicated than that? I think if we were to ever see and I have no idea whether they're even interested in that.

1:08:36But if Harry and Meghan were to return to the UK and Harry was to take on some kind of working role or sort of side by side role with the institution, I think they would be up against a really big challenge of acceptance because what Harry and Meghan have become are almost kind of like proxies within this kind of culture war of woke versus non-woke, shall we say. And I think that the people that have sided with the royal institution, the people that still believe certain things about the couple that may or may not be true, are very much wedded to those beliefs and thoughts. And I don't think suddenly showing back up is going to really change that.

1:09:18I also think that a lot of the things that Harry and Meghan stand for clash with the beliefs and actions of the royal institution. And so it might look a little bit hypocritical to them. But I think one thing that everyone could be on the same page for is that they would love to see some of that unity within the family fold. If we could see a son with his father in his kind of later stages of life, if we could see some of those moments that show that regardless of the kind of really awful things that have happened in recent years, that people are able to grow up, move on and kind of maybe not forget, but to forgive and move forwards.

1:09:57yeah i mean we interestingly don't actually see that much of william and charles together and that was something that i really went deep into in endgame you know this is a couple of years old this book now but there was almost a whole chapter dedicated in there to the downfall or the kind of like fractures between william and charles and how much of that is political and down to their positions and the the kind of warring houses within the institution but also how much of that is down to personality differences and different outlooks on life and different positions when it comes to what is right for the future of the monarchy.

1:10:32You know, we see that these are two men with very different opinions on things. And I really think that in terms of the royal story, and granted, I haven't followed it that closely in recent in the last year or so, I think that that's still an emerging story that we'll see a lot more of in the months ahead and robin so two questions for absence one first one is will there be a book too and second one can you tell me anything at all about the tv version when we can expect it and you know any more details and omit actually if you want to jump in i don't know who the best person out of the two of you to ask is about the tv show um i will definitely defer to omit on the tv show he is far more involved than i am um i decided to take a what they call a non-working role which i've waited my whole life to get paid to be happy can i have a non-working role i mean yeah family's so proud um but i think we would love to write a sequel omen and i we had lunch a few months ago we sat down and i was like i have this idea for this and he was like i love that and we immediately i often say that our writing style together is like children playing with legos stacking he just i had an idea then he'll have an idea then i have an idea and suddenly we have a book.

1:11:44And I would love to write a sequel. I have always, regardless of the genre that I'm writing or the age I'm writing for, I just, I'm always curious about what's happening next for my characters. And I think when you're talking about the Royal Family as it exists in our book, per se, as you're talking about the people who work behind the scenes, there's always going to be material forever. And there's always going to be ways to see people grow and change and come into the fold and leave the fold however we decide to make that happen in our world um so yeah i would love to write a sequel i think omid feels the same way can i can i ask quickly before we jump into the tv aspect of it is it was it a two book deal or a three book deal or the contract or was it just for one book one or is that like you can't talk about it but we have a publisher that has ever since day one spoken about and wanted to hear about the kind of plans for uh these characters and beyond, spinoff opportunities.

1:12:39You know, I think we've, we're very fortunate to be working with a publisher that see the vision for the universe here and have done since day one. It's always been part of the conversation. It was always the first things that we asked about. And there are also just so many things that I feel we didn't get to fit into this book, let alone like where the characters are headed to next. As you know, like there are, there's a wealth of kind of like history to, to pick from and be inspired by when it comes to taking these characters into their next chapters. Especially with Lauren, you know, we kind of leave things on a tidy note in the first book, but clearly there's a lot more that will go on between her and the other characters.

1:13:25And you can kind of figure out where some of those challenges may lie. Lauren's nature is not to end things in a tidy way. I believe, I think for nature is to maybe create a little more chaos, which is great news for us. Set off some bombs. And you asked about the show. You know, the show is very much in development at the moment. We've working with Universal Television, a brilliant studio. We have a brilliant partnership with one of the network streamers that will be announced shortly. And yeah, Emily Fox, who's our showrunner, and I have been really busy working on the pages of the scripts. and kind of just like we're sort of just about to enter into the next stage of that which ties in really nicely with the time that the public get to know these characters in the book and we can start to sort of see some of the impressions and feedback that people give and what people want more of you know i think there's a lot in the book that works so well on the page and there are so many things that work great as a visual gag or a moment on screen and i think also just being able to bring to life some of the kind of like larger scale kind of pageantry type moments that I think would look so impressive on screen that on the page we can describe, but, you know, it takes us two seconds to work off four pages in a book sometimes.

1:14:45So there's a lot of fun to be had with that. Yeah. I just, you know, even though I know what happens in the book, I can't wait to see it on a screen. Like I want to see the trip to Singapore. I want to see a state dinner. I want to see these characters in these moments like you can describe it in five pages but to see it on a screen is something very different and i just am so excited to have access to both yeah it'll be really interesting to see them try and recreate like the in in a palace i know it was interesting for me i'm interested because obviously a lot of people don't know how kind of grotty at the back end of a palace is just feel a little bit like you're walking through the back end of a tv studio or something and yeah like trellis tables piled up and all the rest of it so it will be very interesting to see visually how they recreate it well guys thank you so much for coming on and it's been fascinating to talk to you and all the best of luck with it i'm sure it's going to fly off the shelf and everyone watch the show nice to meet you jack thank you so much and that's it for this episode of the royal report be sure to join me every show when i visit the latest royal headlines embark on some royal deep dives and riff on all things royal until next time i'm jack royston thanks for listening and a curtsy to you all.