LONDON (AFP) – Buckingham Palace is considering its next move after a British TV host named two royals who allegedly raised concerns about the skin colour of Prince Harry's son, a royal source said on Thursday.
Speculation has swirled since Harry and his mixed-race wife Meghan made the claims in an explosive US television interview in March 2021 about their time in the royal family.
Harry's late grandmother Queen Elizabeth II responded afterwards that "some recollections may vary" about what was said.
His older brother Prince William – heir to their father King Charles III – has also insisted the royals were "very much not a racist family".
Harry and Meghan, who quit the royal family in early 2020 and moved to north America, have since denied accusing the family of racism, instead implying they had an "unconscious bias".
The claims are back again because the Dutch version of a new book by royal commentator Omid Scobie reportedly named the two royals, forcing the editions to be pulped.
Piers Morgan, a former UK tabloid newspaper editor who has frequently criticised Harry and Meghan, then publicly named the pair, to allow for what he said was an "open debate" about what happened.
He told viewers of his TalkTV show "Uncensored" on Wednesday night: "I don't believe that any racist comments were ever made by any of the royal family.
"And until there is actual evidence of those comments being made I will never believe it."
Meghan, in the couple's Oprah Winfrey interview, claimed one person made the comment about Prince Archie, not two, as Scobie states in his book.
Asked to respond to Morgan's comments, the royal source told AFP: "We are considering all options."
The UK Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that could include legal action.
Scobie, who co-wrote a favourable biography of Harry and Meghan, has said he did not name the royals in the English version of the book, "Endgame" for legal reasons.
The Dutch translator who worked on the book, Saskia Peeters, said the names were in the manuscript sent to her, according to the Daily Mail website.
"As a translator, I translate what is in front of me," she said, according to MailOnline.
"The names of the royals were there in black and white. I did not add them. I just did what I was paid to do and that was (to) translate the book from English into Dutch".
UK media industry trade magazine Press Gazette said Morgan and TalkTV "have risked a possible defamation action" for reporting the claim.
But legal experts said the likelihood of them doing so were small, not least because it would compel the names to be formally put in the public domain.