Princess Kate asked for a statement that said'recollections can vary' about the Sussexes

Princess Kate asked for a statement that said'recollections can vary' about the Sussexes

Valentine Low is best known to royal-gossips as the Times of London royal reporter who got the big exclusive on Kensington Palace's attempts to frame the Duchess of Sussex as a "bully" in 2021, just days before the Sussexes' Oprah interview aired. It was an obvious scheme to smear Meghan because KP was terrified that she would speak about just how horribly she was treated and how the Windsors are full of racists. Low used those connections - KP staffers mostly, Simon Case and Jason Knauf - to position himself as a royal biographer in tune with the royal courtiers....

Valentine Low is best known to royal-gossips as the Times of London royal reporter who got the big exclusive on Kensington Palace's attempts to frame the Duchess of Sussex as a "bully" in 2021, just days before the Sussexes' Oprah interview aired. It was an obvious scheme to smear Meghan because KP was terrified that she would speak about just how horribly she was treated and how the Windsors are full of racists. Low used those connections - KP staffers mostly, Simon Case and Jason Knauf - to position himself as a royal biographer in tune with the royal courtiers. Thus, Low released his book, Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown, last October. It made minimal impact, as did many of the royal books released in a rush last fall, ahead of the publication of Prince Harry's Spare. Well, now Courtiers is coming out in paperback, and Low has updated it with sections about what happened after QEII passed away, and how "race and racism" is one of the biggest issues facing King Charles's reign. The new sections were excerpted in the Times, and there's a lot of dumb drama about how Charles started firing people basically as soon as he became king, how Charles and Camilla changed the locks on Angela Kelly within days (we already knew that) and how Charles's private secretary Clive Alderton (Prince Harry referred to him as the Wasp in Spare) is in over his head and already unpopular with the old-guard at Buckingham Palace. In the section where Low describes the Susan Hussey debacle last November, he goes into the royal issues around race and, of course, the Duchess of Sussex. The Susan Hussey debacle revealed just how much of a problem the issue of race is for the palace. The underlying issue was not going to go away, however: the royal family has a problem with race, and has done so ever since Meghan made clear how unhappy she had been during her time as a working royal. The "bullying investigation": Later, it emerged that the palace had appointed an outside firm of solicitors to conduct an inquiry. Just over a year later, the palace said it would not be releasing the outcome of the inquiry, or even revealing what lessons had been learnt, on the grounds of confidentiality. But most people suspected that the real reason they were burying the report was to try to keep the peace with Harry and Meghan. The Oprah interview: The second, bigger challenge faced by the palace in March 2021 was Harry and Meghan's interview with Oprah Winfrey. For most people, their most damaging accusation concerned what one courtier awkwardly called "the r-word". That had come up because of remarks that a member of the royal family supposedly made about the colour of Harry and Meghan's future baby's skin. A palace team had watched the interview overnight -- it was screened in the US on the evening of Sunday, March 7, and was not due to be shown in the UK until the next day -- and senior officials had spent the morning locked in conference calls as they debated how to respond. A draft statement was ready by 2pm on Monday. Much to the frustration of the media, however, the palace remained silent. One insider said, "One of the reasons was that the late Queen was adamant that she was going to watch the programme first." And she was going to watch it with the rest of the population, on ITV on Monday evening. The palace response: The next day, the serious negotiations began over the official response. William and Kate - the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as they were then -- sat together on a sofa as they discussed with their officials how to deal with the Sussexes' incendiary allegations. The draft statement they had at that point did not yet include the phrase that was to become famous, that "some recollections may vary". The insider recalled, "It had a much milder version. The debate was, do...