Meghan Markle’s friend Omid Scobie has staunchly defended Prince Harry’s controversial memoir Spare as he argued the prince was right to write his own history – as did both King Charles and Diana.
Writing in a column for Yahoo, Mr Scobie criticized media coverage for casting the book, which details alleged fights with Harry’s brother, the Prince of Wales, as a ‘tawdry tell-all’.
He said: “Reading it from beginning to end tells a much more nuanced and layered story. One with heart and fire.”
It came as he shared photos of Prince Harry’s comments on Afghanistan, in which he revealed he had killed 25 Taliban members and said: “And that’s why context matters.”
Omid Scobie, a close friend of Harry and Meghan, argued that Prince Harry’s memoir is no different from similar works published about his parents in the 1990s
Mr Scobie came to Harry’s defense on social media, arguing “context is key” as he shared an excerpt from Spare describing the prince’s time in Afghanistan
The memoir Spare, due to be out within days, was leaked when Spanish shops started selling the Spanish version of the book ahead of its official launch on January 10 – despite being in clearly marked boxes warning that they weren’t for sale period.
Revelations so far include fights with Prince William, conversations in which he begged his father not to marry Camilla and the last words he said to his grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth II.
The Duke of Sussex has been accused of airing ‘dirty laundry’ publicly – but Mr Scobie has once again supported the couple.
Meghan’s trusted friend took aim at the royal family’s “short-term memory loss,” pointing to biographies of Diana and Prince Charles that were written after their divorce.
He went on to draw parallels between the press and public reaction to the work of the then Prince of Wales, King Charles: “For Charles, the negative reaction from the British press and public was violent.
“Accused of brutally attacking his family and disgracing the monarchy, newspaper polls and opinion pieces declared him unfit to be king, and some journalists even suggested that his titles should be stripped from him. (Sounds familiar again?).’
He added: “Harry has spent most of his life writing and talking about it – a surrogate for the heir whose darkest secrets, sad moments and struggles of the world have been revisited by a press with an insatiable appetite for him and.” his family were revealed.
“Never being able to share that life in his own words, it was inevitable that the moment the prince stepped down from his role three years ago, he’d want to put pen to paper.”
Omid Scobie tweeted in support of Prince Harry’s memoir, saying context is “important” when reporting on the contents of the book
But Mr Scobie went even further with public statements on his own social media, criticizing the media in a manner similar to Sussex’s own comments in their sweeping Netflix, Harry and Meghan documentaries.
Speaking about the series of revelations about Harry’s time in Afghanistan, which included revealing that he had killed at least 25 Taliban fighters and viewed them as “pawns” to be removed from the board, rather than people, Mr Scobie said: “I am anti-war so any talk of killing is not for me.
“But it’s wild to see how in 2013 the newspapers called Harry ‘hero prince’, ‘action man’, ‘daring king’ when he spoke about the killing of Taliban insurgents.
“A decade later (and now the enemy) he’s under attack for repeating the same claim.”
In his tweets, Mr Scobie continued: “And that’s why context matters. #SPARE may have leaked early, but (as with any book) the tiny snippets that are reported don’t do the text justice.
He then shared a leaked excerpt from the book detailing Harry’s “problematic” army training on “otherizing” Taliban insurgents.
Prince Harry wrote: “Afghanistan has been a war of mistakes, a war with enormous collateral damage – thousands of innocent people have been killed and maimed and that has always haunted us.
“So, from the day I arrived, my goal was never to go to bed doubting that I had done the right thing, that my aims were correct, that I was firing at the Taliban and only at the Taliban .”
He also described how helicopter technology allowed him to know exactly how many people he had killed and that his number of people killed left him neither “satisfied” nor “embarrassed”.
The book comes just weeks after Harry and Meghan’s bombshell docuseries hit Netflix, in which Harry accused the rest of the royal family of leaking stories about his wife to the press to divert attention away from himself
Prince Harry’s memoir will hit shelves in the UK and around the world on January 10th
The Duke of Sussex wrote: “While I was in the heat and fog of battle, I did not consider these twenty-five as human beings. You can’t kill people if you treat them as people.’
Some former soldiers have publicly criticized Harry’s candid comments, saying he broke an “unwritten rule” by revealing his number of kills.
Alongside his time in Afghanistan, Harry’s memoirs revealed details of an alleged incident in which his brother physically pushed him to the ground and left him dazed on a smashed dog bowl.
He also claimed the now Prince of Wales called Meghan “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”.
Harry claims he and William told Charles they would welcome the now Queen Consort into the family on the condition that he would not marry her and “begged” him not to do so.
The Duke claims his father did not respond to their requests.
As well as royal secrets, the book contains a series of startling revelations about the young prince’s drug use, including cocaine and magic mushrooms, and that he allegedly lost his virginity to an elderly woman in a field behind a pub.
Omid Scobie wrote that the personal anecdotes on Spare’s pages “humanize” the royals, who he claims have been “reduced to caricatures in a very public circus.”
The book comes just weeks after Harry and Meghan’s bombshell docuseries hit Netflix, in which Harry accused the rest of the royal family of leaking stories about his wife to the press to divert attention away from himself.
Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the allegations made in the series.