The sale of a Dutch translation of a British royals biography has been halted after a member of the royal family was named as expressing concern about the skin color of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle’s son while she was pregnant, the book’s author said.
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Markle, who is half Black and half white, told Oprah Winfrey in a 2021 interview, after she and her husband stopped working as royals and moved to California, that there were several “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he was born.” The couple declined to name any family member involved in the conversation.
The controversy resurfaced again after British royal biographer Omid Scobie released his book Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival in August. The English version of the book claims there were two people involved, but doesn’t identify the royals who made the comments, which Scobie said was because he was concerned about libel laws. TIME is also not naming them.
However, the Dutch translation did release a name, leading to a temporary withdrawal of the book after its publication on Tuesday.
The Dutch publisher wrote in a statement on its website that it “was forced to temporarily withdraw the book from the market because an error had occurred in the Dutch edition,” and said it would be available in bookstores on Dec. 8. Scobie appeared on ITV Thursday to defend himself, saying he never named the royals in the English book, the only version he worked on, and didn’t see translations until they came out.
On Wednesday, British TV personality Piers Morgan named two royals on his program, risking legal action.
Winfrey’s interview with the couple caused shockwaves at the time. In response to a reporter’s question afterwards about whether the royal family was racist, Harry’s brother, Prince William, said “we are very much not a racist family.”
In a later interview with ITV, Harry denied an assumption that he and Meghan had accused his family of racism, saying he would not describe the incident as racist and pointed out there is a difference between racism and unconscious bias.
Harry and Meghan stepped back from their senior duties as royals in 2020 and ceased to be working royals. The couple told Winfrey that the “bigoted” British tabloid media, which Harry has also accused of mistreatment of his late mother Princess Diana, was a large part of why they left.
TIME has put in requests for comment to the Dutch publisher and the palace press offices.
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