Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been urged to sue royal author Omid Scobie, after the "royal racist" who commented on their child's skin tone was named in a Dutch translation of his book.
Mark Stephens told Newsweek that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex could rebuild bridges with the royals by getting their own legal team to seek an injunction banning the reprinting of the names.
Scobie told ABC News a "translation error" had led to their inclusion in the version of Endgame published in the Netherlands, which has been pulled from shelves as a result. He said no English language version had included the names, which have circulated on social media.
The passages in question relate to letters sent between Meghan and King Charles III in the days after her Oprah Winfrey interview, in which she said an unnamed royal had expressed "concerns" about how dark her unborn child's skin might be.
Endgame states that two royals were named in those letters, but the author can't reveal them due to U.K. laws.
Stephens said the right to privacy in relation to the letters exists not only for the king, but also for Meghan—meaning she has just as much right to sue as Charles does. Privacy rights also exist whether the names are accurate or not.
"Privacy doesn't just belong to the palace it belongs separately and severally to Meghan and Harry," he told Newsweek.
"Presumably Meghan and Harry have given a solemn undertaking that this should never see the light of day and given their absolute horror at invasions of privacy it is frankly astonishing that they haven't already instructed Schillings [their legal team] to issue injunctive proceedings against Omid Scobie.
"He's let the cat out of the bag and they can also get the injunction against the world—and it could be the great rapprochement."
Any injunction would apply to future publication or repetition of the names and could be sought at the High Court in London, he said.
"You're mainly looking to prevent him or anyone else from repeating information that should have never seen the light of day," Stephens said.
"The way that Harry and Meghan demonstrate that they didn't want to see this in the public domain is by getting an injunction against the person who's breached their confidence.
"The moral imperative is that they must—given their widely known concerns about privacy and seeing another member of the family suffer as well as themselves suffer from an invasion of privacy—they would want to do everything they could to prevent it going further."
Harry and Meghan's rift with the wider royal family dates back years, but recent months appeared to indicate a potential breakthrough between the couple and the king after an apparent call to the monarch on his 75th birthday on November 14.
However, some have expressed a fear that the inclusion of inside information in Endgame will reignite the rift, owing to speculation about whether details in the book leaked from Harry and Meghan's camp.
Hence Stephens' contention that applying for an injunction would represent a rapprochement with the royal family.
Eric Schiffer, chair of Reputation Management Consultants, told Newsweek: "It seems intended to create a strategic rift between the king and William, which raises questions about who may be feeding that and who benefits from it.
"The question is was this fed by Harry with the intent to destroy the close relationship between William and the king and if so its a new act of war," he added.
Scobie told Linsey Davis on ABC: "This translation error that you refer to is an incident that happened just hours before I appeared here in the studio and, as I'm aware, it's being dealt with by the Dutch publisher.
"You know, I wrote this book in English, I edited it in English and it's being published in the U.S. and U.K. by Harper Collins and for us there were no names in the manuscript." He wasn't asked whether the names that the Dutch translation had included were correct.
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.
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Jack Royston is Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent based in London, U.K. He reports on the British royal family—including King Charles ... Read more
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