Last week, The Telegraph broke the story about Roslyn Loveless offering to give more information to Scotland Yard in 2018/19. Apparently, Roslyn’s letter to Scotland Yard more detailed information about Thomas Markle, and the entire British police force just decided to ignore her offer. And then the same police force “lost” the letter, apparently not realizing that the Duchess of Sussex keeps receipts. Within that Telegraph story, this curious passage appeared: “The letter was passed from royal protection officers to what at the time was the joint office of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at Kensington Palace, The Telegraph understands, which suggests that the wider royal household was aware of its contents.” The Mail’s Richard Eden basically said the same thing one day before, that it would have been unthinkable that Loveless’s letter wasn’t also shared with Prince William and Kate, not to mention their senior staffers and royal protection unit. So basically, William and Kate have (arguably) known about Thomas Markle’s perversions since January 2019. When will people start asking them what they knew and when? Not any time soon, if Tom Sykes has his way.

When the news broke last week that Thomas Markle had been accused of hoarding a stash of child sex abuse material, a certain kind of comment piece went round the, ahem, progressive end of the media almost instantly. The headlines were all variations on the same theme: how long before Meghan’s father allegedly hoarding p–phile material turned out to be “Meghan’s fault?” Not long, was the implication, if the wicked tabloids had anything to do with it.

A week on, there is an alternative spin on offer, and it is coming from the Sussexes’ new house magazine, The Telegraph, and what it looks very much like, to my eye, is Meghan’s side trying to lump at least some of the blame for what happened to that letter onto William and Catherine.

The same double standard runs through everything. In February 2020 they announced that by giving up public funds they had removed the “supposed ‘public interest’ justification for media intrusion.” In September this year their office issued a media advisory headed “PRINCE HARRY, DUKE OF SUSSEX SEPTEMBER PUBLIC ENGAGEMENTS,” and their friends briefed that they are public figures, not private citizens. They are whichever suits the day. And so it is with the letter: private when it protects her, public when it convicts the press, and now, apparently, a matter for the wider royal household when the question turns to who sat on it.

I find the choice of vehicle fascinating. This is The Telegraph that last week fired around 100 staff as its new owner, Axel Springer (which bought the paper in June for £575 million), announced its intention to turn it into a “global, AI-powered premium media and intelligence business.” I called that a Slopbait factory in a Substack Note last night, and I stand by the coinage (neologisms are what Substack is for). Any tidbit about Harry and Meghan drives traffic, and what we appear to be watching is a paper abandoning basic journalistic principles and taking what it is fed on trust from a team that has been shown, again and again, to be highly manipulative and to say things that are not true when it suits them.

[From The Royalist]

Basically, the girls are fighting. Royalist vs. royalist, royal reporter vs. royal reporter, tabloid vs. tabloid. An internecine British media war which might turn up something interesting. While I think Sykes is correct (in a limited way) that Team Sussex is letting everyone know that William and Kate were informed of Loveless’s letter, that theory has been widely assumed for the past week. Multiple royal reporters have openly speculated that not only did William and Kate know, but that Clarence House and Buckingham Palace were likely informed as well. Meaning, at the time, then-Prince Charles’s office and QEII’s office.

The reason all of this “did they know” speculation is so damning for William and Kate in particular is because their right-hand man Jason Knauf helped the Daily Mail and Thomas Markle when Meghan sued the Mail. Knauf bent over backwards to not only aid the Mail, but to justify Thomas Markle’s campaign of abuse against Meghan.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.