That sound you can hear is the world turning on Kate Middleton.

That Piers Morgan is a piece of work. 

He doesn't believe the royal family are racists. Not for a second. How very dare you. 

But, since we're talking about it, which ones of them are racists? Oh, this one and this one. 

If you haven't caught up yet on the royal story that's swallowing the week, here's a very topline cheat sheet. 

There's a new book out by Omid Scobie. He is a writer close to Prince Harry, and the journalist who collaborated with Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, to write a book about them in 2020, called Finding Freedom. 

Scobie's new book is called Endgame and it's about how the royal family (the London branch, not the Montecito branch) are very, very bad. So bad that they'll be gone soon. Endgame, get it? 

In it, he writes about the conversation that Meghan discussed in the infamous interview with Oprah back in 2021. The one where she said Harry had told her some senior royals had speculated about the colour of their then-unborn baby's skin. 

Watch: Meghan Markle and Prince Harry with Oprah Winfrey. Post continues below.

At the time, Oprah asked Meghan if she would name those royals. Meghan said no. Harry wouldn't name them, either, in his book, Spare. 

But Scobie has named them in Endgame, albeit by accident. He claims a Dutch version of the book contained the names of these senior royals without his knowledge, and without him putting them there. That version of the book might be being pulped, but Scobie also says their identity was an "open secret" on Fleet Street, and was bound to come out eventually.

Yesterday, on his TV show, Piers Morgan decided we all deserved to know what names Scobie didn't write, even though, as discussed, he doesn't believe a conversation took place or was even racist or anything. Not our royals, etc, etc.

The names of the royals who are alleged to have had this conversation about Archie's skin colour are Catherine, Princess of Wales. And the King, Charles III.

No one is very surprised about the King. No one even seems bothered about that. Who wouldn't expect the crusty old codger to say something offensive, the people shrug. How very shocking. 

But Kate? Well, everyone is very excited about Kate.

She's a Princess. She never says much, so she's a blank canvas onto which we can project whatever we like. And what Harry and Meghan's "side" seem to want to project onto her is this: She's mean, she's jealous, and yes, she's racist.

In Spare, Prince Harry's frankly excellent memoir about growing up him, he writes about how he liked Kate, for years. She was a sister to him. But he also slips in that it was kind-of-sort-of her idea that he dressed as a Nazi for that fancy dress party, back in 2005. And that she wasn't warm and welcoming to Meghan, when Harry brought her into their circle. And that she was a bit put out by all the attention Megs was getting, back before the press turned on her. And that, of course, she made Meghan cry, in the lead up to her wedding, about something-something flower girls, something-something tights.

You might imagine, that having had a front-row seat, twice now, to the public shaming, harassment and humiliation doled out to royal women under a spotlight, Harry might not have turned his so unflinchingly on Kate. It felt, reading Spare, ungenerous for him to be so scathing about her. 

Maybe we just found out the truth of why he was. 

Of course, Scobie is saying that he didn't collaborate with Harry or Meghan on his book. But, cynics will point out, he said that about the last book. And then changed his story. 

Either way, Princess vs Duchess is an irresistible tabloid scenario. This story has given that drama new legs and it comes at a bad time for Kate. 

In two weeks the final few episodes of The Crown drop. It's largely about her, and William. And it's easy to imagine how affected her public image will be by the likely narrative that her mother, Carole, bred her girls to hunt royal husbands. Given that we know so little about the "real" Kate, we're particularly suggestible to a fictionalised version, and if that version is that she was a gold-digger, a scheming, glory-hunting professional princess-in-waiting, it will stick. 

Also, whispers of racism are particularly damaging for Kate because Kate is still doing an inherently problematic job in an inherently problematic institution. Last year, she and William faced a new reality head-on when their tour of the Caribbean turned out to be far from a glimmering success. The imagery of privileged white royals, in all their ceremonial splendour, waving from a distance or shaking hands through a chainlink fence with people of colour in territories pushing for slavery reparations from Britain, is not cute.

Travelling around the Commonwealth doing exactly that is a big part of the job, and there aren't many royals to share that job with any more. And everywhere they go, the legacy of colonialism is there, no longer silent, no longer beneath the surface, but front and centre in renewed pushes for damages and swings to republicanism.

Race is a glaring, urgent issue for the royal family. And that is why this matters. 

Kate is the darling of the anti-Meghan media brigade. They will insist that if indeed Kate said what Meghan says Harry says they did, it wasn't even racist anyway.

That's not for them to decide. Or for Kate, or Charles to say, if they were going to say anything. 

That's for the world to judge. And much of the world knows how it feels to have your identity questioned, or used as a punchline or dismissed out of hand. And they will look at Kate differently for it. 

There's a world in which Prince Catherine and King Charles admit to making offensive remarks and apologise. There's a world where Harry and Meghan release a statement to say that none of this actually happened. And there's a world in which all the royals, whichever side they're on, admit that the very concept of them being 'chosen' to rule over a Commonwealth with stinking roots is outdated and damaging.

But we don't live in any of those worlds. 

When it comes to the endless family arguments of the Windsors - some of the most powerful people on the planet - we live, apparently, in Endgame.

Feature image: Getty/Canva.

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