Omid Scobie royal book: More like Action Replay than Endgame

If you're looking for sizzling royal drama, untold intrigue and scandal, this new book is probably going to be a disappointment. It's called Endgame but much of its feels more like Action Replay.

Omid Scobie's widely-trailed book covers familiar territory, with an account of family tensions and palace plots, through the era of Prince Harry and Meghan's departure for the US, the late Queen's death and into the new reign of King Charles.

But with its relentlessly recriminatory tone, it's often more mope opera than soap opera. It's a slightly 2-D world where malign palace officials seem to be permanently conspiring with journalists. The chaos, cock-ups and boredom of real-life never seem to intrude.

It's inevitable that Endgame will be compared with Prince Harry's firecracker memoir Spare. That was a book filled with first-hand emotions and raw experience. There were fights, drugs, fear, grieving and not to mention a frozen penis.

Endgame is a much less red-blooded piece of writing. It's more eggshell than bombshell. The title references a chess game, but it's a highly one-sided match, all attack and not much defence.

In Scobie's book, Prince William is painted as emotionally volatile and manipulative, freezing out his brother.

He's described as a "company man - an institutional champion who's privately embraced the draconian tactics of an antiquated and often vicious institution".

Endgame author says Sussexes not involved
Spare: The weirdest book ever written by a royal
Prince Harry calls King for 75th birthday
There are suggestions of tensions between his ambitions and the King's "transitional" reign.

Catherine, the Princess of Wales, in this version is "cold", nicknamed "Katie Keen", an almost silent figure trapped in endless photo-opportunities.