Just as Prince Andrew’s disgrace and the wider royal crisis refuse to go away, the British media has wheeled out one of its most dependable performers: Tom Bower, a man whose Sussex coverage long ago crossed from hostility into delusional fixation. Reuters reported that Bower’s new book serialisation triggered an unusually strong response from Harry and Meghan Sussex’s spokesperson, who called it a “deranged conspiracy.” Reuters also noted that the book leans heavily on the now familiar line that Meghan “brainwashed” Harry, while tying Harry’s fears to the downfall of Prince Andrew. 

Andrew is not a historical embarrassment that the palace can quietly file away. His ties to Jeffrey Epstein raise a clear question: what did the rest of the Royal Family know? The question is straightforward, yet the palace still refuses to answer it. Authorities arrested Andrew in February, and King Charles publicly stated that “the law must take its course.” This issue, therefore, stands at the centre of the monarchy’s most serious crisis, not at its margins. Even so, coverage repeatedly shifts public attention away from the man at the heart of the scandal and redirects it towards Harry and Meghan, the couple the press continues to frame as a convenient national distraction.

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Tom Bower’s Meghan Obsession Reveals The Royal Media Playbook

Bower is useful to the distraction machine because he says the quiet part loudly. His record already includes language about Meghan that drew widespread backlash, including the now-notorious “brazen hussy” remark, which Newsweek revisited last year when Sussex supporters confronted him at the Invictus Games in Vancouver. He also openly admitted in a television appearance in 2022 that “It’s Meghan I’m after,” which rather gives the game away. 

“Meghan had become a divisive agent. To please her, Harry was ignoring his old friends. He even changed his telephone number without telling his family. The jovial lad about town became possessed by seeking revenge… Increasingly, his character mirrored Meghan’s. Emotionally, he veered towards extremes… ‘Meghan’s brainwashed Harry,’ Camilla told a friend.

“William’s dislike of Meghan had been obvious after his warning to Harry before their engagement. ‘It’s gone too quickly,’ William had said about the speed of Harry’s relationship with ‘the American actress’. William’s suspicion of Meghan was echoed by his wife.”

— Tom Bower, serialised excerpt reported in The Mirror

“While Meghan’s certainty of purpose had seduced Harry, her talents had alarmed his brother and Kate… Both evidently saw Meghan as a threat rather than an ally…Rightly, Harry fears that the future King William could remove all the Sussexes’ titles and effectively banish him from Britain…Considering all the damning words and lies spoken and written by the Sussexes against the royal family… the chance of the King irritating the Prince and Princess of Wales to please the Sussexes is… remote.

Tom Bower, The Times

And that is the real point here. This is not sober royal reporting. It is a palace-adjacent morality play in which Meghan is cast, yet again, as temptress, manipulator, social climber and public menace, while Harry is reduced to a weak white man supposedly stripped of agency. Those tropes do not appear in a vacuum. They flourish in a British press culture that still has a serious diversity problem. A Guardian piece published this week, citing fresh research, described “apartheid newsroom” conditions, noted that Black journalists remain only 1.3% of the workforce, and said white journalists still make up 86% of UK journalists. Reuters Institute research has separately found that in its UK sample, there were no top editors of colour at major outlets surveyed in 2025. 

What The Serialisation Is Trying To Do

Across the excerpts published by The Mirror and The Times, the authors push the same message from multiple angles. They describe Harry as “brainwashed” and frame Meghan as a “divisive” force. Bower positions William and Kate as alarmed truth-tellers while using Andrew’s downfall as a warning about what could happen to Harry. He also reframe Invictus as “the Harry and Meghan show,” cast Meghan’s appearances as vanity, and portray the couple’s finances as spiralling. The narrative leads to a clear conclusion: reconciliation appears “remote,” Meghan becomes the problem, Harry appears compromised, and the palace emerges as the injured party.

“Mr Bower’s commentary has long crossed the line from criticism into fixation. 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… in the once-respected Times.”

Spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, speaking to GB News

Bower’s material stands out not because it introduces anything new, but because it repeats a script the royal media has circulated for years. In this familiar narrative, writers cast Meghan Sussex as the ambitious outsider pushing too far, while they portray Harry as either pitiable or foolish. Commentators reframe their charitable work as self-promotion and treat public appearances as evidence of vanity. They present the marriage as a dysfunction rather than a partnership. They also recast achievements as PR spin and frame setbacks as inevitable consequences. Meanwhile, coverage allows the monarchy’s own failures to fade into the background as attention shifts once again to Sussex-focused drama.

The language itself gives the game away. Describing Harry as “brainwashed” reads less like analysis and more like an insult packaged as insider insight. The phrase strips Harry of agency while casting Meghan Sussex as the convenient villain in the story. Its framing carries clear sexist undertones and an unflattering implication about her influence. At the same time, the narrative serves a useful purpose for royalists and royal commentators alike, because it shifts attention away from the institution and removes any expectation that the monarchy might share responsibility for the family’s breakdown.

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Then there is the remarkable nerve of using Invictus as a smear vehicle. An event founded to support wounded veterans is treated here not as a serious and meaningful project, but as another chance to sneer at Meghan’s clothes, Meghan’s body language, Meghan’s ambition, Meghan’s supposed hunger for attention. That choice is telling. It suggests that for this corner of the press, even veterans’ rehabilitation is secondary to the real editorial mission, which is keeping the Sussexes in the dock.

The Pattern Behind The Sussex Smear Cycle

Some of Bower’s claims may attract headlines, but headlines are not proof. I could verify reporting on the serialisation, the Sussex response, Andrew’s legal context, and Bower’s past “brazen hussy” remark about Meghan. I could not independently verify many of the more dramatic claims in the excerpts, including alleged private conversations or internal Invictus disputes. That distinction matters.

It also matters that parts of the wider anti-Sussex narrative have already collapsed under scrutiny. One example involves the long-circulated claim about Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland. In his earlier book, Bower repeated the allegation and suggested her absence during part of Meghan’s childhood stemmed from drugs and criminal activity. He never substantiated those claims, and many have disputed them. Despite that, large parts of the British press repeated the story for years before anyone seriously challenged or corrected it.

The same pattern appears in more recent coverage. Claims that Netflix “cancelled” Harry and Meghan are misleading. We reported last year that their original deal reached its natural end, while the couple will continue to have a first-look deal with several developing projects with the platform in the pipeline. That is very different from the collapse narrative repeatedly pushed in hostile coverage.

Viewed together, the pattern becomes difficult to ignore. The Sussexes are framed as chaos agents while the institution itself fades safely into the background.

So yes, the latest barrage should be read for what it is: spectacle. A loud, highly marketable palace-adjacent story arriving at a moment when the monarchy would much rather the public focus anywhere else.

No matter how many books are serialised or narratives recycled, one fact remains unavoidable. The monarchy’s most serious reputational crisis still centres on Prince Andrew and his association with Jeffrey Epstein.

That is the story. And no amount of Sussex spectacle will make it disappear.

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