Prince Harry's biographer blames duke's rift with Prince William on top civil servant

The UK's top civil servant, according to the royal biographer, allegedly attempted to discredit Harry and Meghan Markle by leaking negative information about them to the media.

Scobie said that when Case was appointed William’s private secretary in 2018, he saw an opportunity to use “PR gamesmanship” to “widen cracks already appearing in the brothers’ relationship to the heir’s advantage”.

WATCH NOW: Omid Scobie on Good Morning America

Speaking ahead of the publication of his book Endgame, which will hit UK shelves tomorrow, Scobie said: “Case was charged with rebranding William.

"At that point, William was called workshy and lazy in the papers, they were quite cruel about him. The way he went about it was a trigger for Harry and Meghan falling out with the institution.”

Speaking to The i, Scobie said Case “repositioned William as the heir, the responsible adult in the room, casting Harry, the spare, as the wayward one, the selfish brother with a competing agenda”.

The author claimed that the top civil servant exploited the backlash that Harry and Meghan received after using Elton John’s private jet to fly to Nice.

He did this by spinning a story that Prince William and Princess Kate boarded a £73 budget Flybe flight from Norwich to Aberdeen for a trip to Balmoral.

The author continued: “A premeditated publicity set-up: This was all Case’s handiwork."

It later emerged that two empty jets were flown 500 miles to take the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children to Aberdeen on a Flybe-branded plane.

Eastern Airways, which operated the flight, said this was an operational matter.

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However, Scobie quoted a Palace aide as saying the Waleses “looked like even bigger hypocrites than the couple they were trying to show up”.

Sources close to William and Kate have indicated that they were not aware that Flybe had changed the flights and that they did not request any special treatment.

Scobie wrote that Case’s actions “activated a chain of events that have helped damage a brotherly relationship beyond repair”.

He added: “William is firmly in the role of a decisive King-in-waiting and Harry has been cast by the Palace and the press as a perceived lost soul.”

Kensington Palace declined to comment on any of the claims made by Scobie in Endgame.