Jen's Reviews > Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy's Fight for Survival

3.5 stars. I didn't plan on reading this until the UK media as a whole started hyperventilating over it in unison. The US has its own media issues, but good lord, the UK tabloid culture seems to have gobbled many people's good sense and logical reasoning over there. Anyway, I wanted to see what the hysteria was all about for myself.

As far as I can tell, the UK rags are just offended that Scobie's harshest criticisms are reserved for the UK media. There's nothing truly shocking in this book if you've been paying attention, but I did find the section on the media and courtiers to be the most enlightening and horrifying.

The book is (sadly) not anti-monarchy, but it is a solid synthesis of information that speaks to where the British monarchy is headed. Scobie only sugarcoats one person in the book, the late queen (annoying to me because although she was loved by many, she was also rightly criticized by many). Everyone else is fair game for criticism, as they should be. As public figures receiving public money, this family should be scrutinized as much as any politician. More even! It just came out recently that the family has been profiting off the deaths of ordinary citizens. How many people actually heard that story over the constant churn of tabloid nonsense? The symbiotic relationship between the tabloids and the monarchy is truly vile.