There may be hope that Prince Harry could be enticed to return home by being given a job and brought back into the fold, but it comes with a catch.
Royal biographer Tom Bower has been critical of the Sussexes, arguing that they represent a threat to the future of the monarchy. His upcoming book, Betrayal: Power, Deceit and the Fight for the Future of the Royal Family, features new bombshells, including allegations that Queen Camilla once told a friend Meghan had “brainwashed” her husband.
The Sussexes fought back, arguing, “This is someone who has publicly stated, ‘the monarchy in fact depends on actually obliterating the Sussexes from our state of life’, language that speaks for itself. He has made a career out of constructing ever more elaborate theories about people he does not know and has never met. Those interested in facts will look elsewhere; those seeking deranged conspiracy and melodrama know exactly where to find him.”
Discussing journalist and co-founder of the Daily Beast, Tina Brown’s review of the book, The Royalist Podcast’s Tom Sykes points out Brown’s argument that the Royal family needs to “put schadenfreude aside” and give the Sussexes a limited international role.
“What do you say to people who say, ‘Sorry Tom Bower, you’re completely wrong—the answer is not to obliterate them from the monarchy, from the royal family, the answer is to bring them back in the tent, give them a job, and maybe then they can be controlled.’ Do you think it’s just completely naive to think that they would agree?” Sykes asked Bower.
“I think Harry would like that solution,” Bower replied, “but Meghan definitely would not want to live in London.”
“She doesn’t want to be part of Britain,” he continued, adding, “she wants to be a star in California, so I think that as long as they’re married, that is a completely untenable solution.”
“It is only a recipe for more and more sensational danger, because Meghan would always look for a way to complain. She can’t be satisfied. She can’t. She doesn’t want to be part of the British royal family.”
Bower added that Brown, “who is a star,” doesn’t understand that the British public “wouldn’t accept Meghan back on any terms at all.”
“Even if she groveled, they’d feel, ‘Well, you’re not groveling enough.’ They’re really angry with her, so I don’t believe that is the solution.”
Harry and Meghan relocated to Los Angeles, California—Meghan’s hometown—in March 2020 with their son Archie after Harry stepped back from royal duties in January of that year. Daughter Lilibet was born in Santa Barbara just over a year later.
Expanding on his own argument about the threat the Sussexes pose for the royal family, Bower said, “Whatever you do with the Sussexes, you couldn’t rely on them to be discreet and silent and obedient for very long because of what their own needs.”
“Selfishness, in the end, would trump everything that the Windsors might offer them and that is a problem, that there’s no easy solution, if there is a solution at all.”
He explained that when combined with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s scandals—namely, his lengthy friendship with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, the accusations leveled against him by women like Virginia Giuffre, and his arrest last month—the situation is “quite dangerous and toxic, to say the least.”
“The trouble really is that both King Charles and Prince William haven’t found a way to neutralize the danger, and I don’t know if there is a way. That’s the problem.”
The Daily Beast has contacted representatives of the Sussexes for comment.
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