Following on from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s ‘bombshell’ Oprah Winfrey interview back in March, it’s been reported that a new edition of last year’s biography of the couple, Finding Freedom, is set to further explore some of the issues raised in the television appearance. There has been valid information that a leaked epilogue included in the updated edition of Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand’s book offers yet further revelations. The biography is an unauthorized one, and Prince Harry and Meghan’s representatives have repeatedly distanced the couple from having had any involvement in its creation. Lawyers for the couple previously stated that Scobie and Durand did ‘not speak for our clients and seem to rely on unnamed sources’. It is billed, however, as having been composed ‘with unique access and written with the participation of those closest to the couple’, revealing ‘unknown details of Harry and Meghan’s life together’.
The new edition, due for publication by Harper Collins by early next week, reportedly includes the claim that the couple considered publicly naming the Royal Family member who, said the duchess in the Oprah interview, raised ‘concerns and conversations about how dark [Archie’s] skin might be when he’s born’. She further went on to tell Oprah that to reveal the identity of the individual ‘would be very damaging to them’, but the new Finding Freedom chapter reportedly discloses that the couple did consider ‘sharing this detail’.
Prince Harry and Meghan clarified after the interview that it was neither the Queen nor the late Prince Philip who made the remarks. Buckingham Palace responded with a statement at the time, saying: ‘the issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.’
The updated edition alleges that the version of events offered to the media by palace courtiers at the time of Archie Mountbatten-Windsor’s birth, attesting that the couple did not want their son to be a prince, was not the full story, and that the pair would have liked to have had this option. Meghan stated in the Oprah interview: ‘They didn’t want him to be a prince… which would be different from protocol, and [said] that he wasn’t going to receive security’.
