Revenge - by Tom Bower

[TideTimeSea]

As the other thread has filled up I wondered if anyone would like to discuss the book here. I’m listening to it on Audible now.

I am not reading the book but am interested in exploring further Bower's choice of title for it - "Revenge". The last thread established that the revenge refers to revenge taken by both H & M on the RF, and there seemed to be a reasonable explanation for H's revenge, namely that the RF did not allow him to be king. However, given that M went through the RF like a dose of salts, what would her reasoning be? She simply wasn't there long enough for the RF to have done anything to her. Why should she feel vengeful?

really you felt the need to res the Megan bash
are people that obsessed.

I’m finding it a really fascinating insight into the world of “influencers”, celebrity and commercialised philanthropy. I had literally no idea the efforts people make to achieve recognition for the sake of their own personal brand and cash. Employing PR companies and agents etc. and UN Women sounds like a racket in itself.
Meghan is not at all alone in employing these tactics, she just happened to end up marrying Harry. Any other influencer would probably seem just as shallow - or even worse - under the same scrutiny and microscope. So far what I’m taking from the book is what a sad, harsh and shallow world the Hollywood/celebrity/influencer domain is. Meghan is just one of many, and she has does nothing that terrible, it just all adds up to a life of little substance. I’m only on around chapter 8 so maybe I’ll change my mind.

@MaulPerton no idea yet where the title came from. So far the book is focusing on Megan’s life before her second marriage. Nothing that extraordinary or shocking, just a relentless drive for fame and fortune. Not unusual for Hollywood by the sounds of it, nor indeed for some other careers where you have to be totally driven and ruthless, but it is rather exhausting listening to the lengths she had to go to to sell herself and her brand. The Rwanda stuff is just rotten. On the other hand it did annoy me that there was an insinuation in the book that she was mean not to go along with it and have kids with her first husband because he wanted them, thereby sabotaging her recently launched career. It would have been career suicide.
I’m finding it does help shed light on why she ultimately wanted to leave the royal family - not owning her own brand after years of very carefully curating it must have been very frustrating indeed. In hindsight it could never have worked! I have no idea how Harry fits into any of it though (yet).

It is fascinating how this happens. I have been watching how foundations operate for years so am not surprised at all. I do wonder if Bower's real contribution will be to introduce these processes to a wider audience using H & M as a vehicle to do so because they exposed, to paraphrase H, "the business model behind the curtain", so clumsily?

Yes I agree.
It’s a whole world I knew nothing about before this.

The Rwanda stuff is just rotten.

The woman who actually organised and ran the Rwanda trip and the photographer both confirmed that none of this ever happened, and that Bower just made it all up out of thin air.

If this claim was true, how come not one photo from this alleged secret photoshoot have ever surfaced? All the photos from her Rwanda trip show her with no makeup and ordinary clothes, interacting with locals (apart from one 'portrait' which the photographer said he snapped impromptu in a classroom).

Surely the entire point of doing a photoshoot is to have photos to show off?

there seemed to be a reasonable explanation for H's revenge, namely that the RF did not allow him to be king

I don't understand this point. Harry wouldn't become King unless something happened to William and his children. Harry must have known from the time he was sentient that he was unlikely ever to become King. This has been so for most second/subsequent sons throughout history. As a motive for 'revenge' it couldn't be further from reasonable.

What is the Rwanda stuff?

I think being an influencer is such an uncertain job that they must feel they need to push as much as possible while they still have something to sell. From Meghan's perspective, (no shade on Meghan, it's the same for the vast majority of actresses), once she's in her 30s, she knows her acting career isn't going to go on for long so shes going to need to use all her contacts and her reputation to try to make a future. And as people get bored of influencers so quickly, they really need to get cash as quickly as they can.

The UN have so many actresses speaking there, doesn't that drain away their kudos and worth? When does anyone ever hear what they're saying? It seems like an ever increasing number of people looking for a limited number of positions. It must be draining and a bit soul-destroying.

What is the Rwanda stuff?

Bower made up some bizarre story that Meghan turned up with suitcases full of super glam clothes (yet weirdly not a single photo of her wearing anything but plain shirts and wrinkly casual cotton dresses exist), insisted on a "glam squad" to do full hair and makeup for her (who apparently are both invisible and terrible at their jobs, since everyone else involved on the trip ever saw them and she's visibly not wearing makeup and 'done' hair in any of the photos), and that she and the photographer snuck off to do a professional glamourous photoshoot using Rwanda as a backdrop (no photos have ever materialised).

Just all lies.

The general consensus on the previous thread seemed to be that H was and is badly behaved because he is the spare, drawing the short straw in the lottery of life, as it were... He knew that he would never be king but he railed against it instead of demonstrating quiet acceptance. This intolerable situation drove him to exact the 'revenge' on the RF that we see today. Only supposition, of course.

What nonsense.

What "revenge"? He left. Someone dumping you is not "revenge". They just want to be allowed to live their own lives and have privacy and freedom for their children. Of course he never wanted to be king. From the time he was young he's said he hated the press, hated the royal circus, hated not being allowed to pursue a career and life of his own choosing, and wanted to leave.

He's been thrown to the wolves since he was a child and used as a scapegoat to protect his brother (eg press given damaging stories about Harry as a quid pro quo to censor them from writing negative stories about William).

When he got married he saw how the palace smeared Meghan and leaked horrible stories about her to the press to protect William and Andrew, and how the palace refused to protect her when the press were racially abusing her and later their baby and on an extreme hate campaign against her that nearly killed her and saw Neo Nazi terrorists convicted of planning to kill him, no doubt influenced by the racist hate campaign in the media.

They did one interview and said a couple of mild things, there's plenty they could reveal but didn't, and have been very agreeable and compliant in being willing to come back and be part of the Royal horse and pony show. They've shown remarkable maturity while the RF has continued to smear, leak and attack them and basically act obsessed with Harry and Meghan because they can't believe he dumped them like bad rubbish.

I agree with all of this.

They did one interview and said a couple of mild things,

I don't condemn them for leaving - they're not intrinsic to the throne so they should do what makes them happy. But I don't think accusing the RF of racism and of caring so little for her that she was an hour away from committing suicide were mild things! 🤔

(They) have been very agreeable and compliant in being willing to come back and be part of the Royal horse and pony show.

Neither of them needed to come back for any reason. They weren't in any way forced to. I guess he wanted to see his GM who he says he loves. He certainly wasn't needed for the Jubilee - he hardly did anything. If anything it sort of implanted in most people's minds how irrelevant he is in the UK these days. Which is actually quite sad because he was so popular and having a bi racial woman in the RF was so great for the country as a whole.

So if the Rwanda stuff is all “made up”, are you saying the author literally made it up? I don’t believe he has published anything that does not a have source, but of course it’s possible the source made it up. Meghan Markle does feature on the front page of Gabor Jurinas website, so he has worked with her at some point. If it is completely made up I expect we should see a libel case soon.

That's not nice if she's done something good for charity and then people have lied to subvert that.

But the pictures she's in made me laugh a bit. She's hugging the children and each of the children are staring directly into the camera. Then I realised it's the same child she keeps hugging. Different angles, sunglasses on, sunglasses off. Child still staring determinedly at camera. 😎😂

Rwandan children love the camera🤷‍♀️

That's not nice if she's done something good for charity and then people have lied to subvert that

There's an article in the DM where she discusses her Rwanda trip as follows 'My life shifts from refugee camps to red carpets, I choose them both because these worlds can, in fact, coexist.'

Said with a straight face, I presume.

How can anyone tell when she's done something nice for charity?

I don't know. These are from Rwanda. She seemed to wear different clothes during the day and she clearly styled herself for these, altering her clothing. Obviously they weren't for the charity photos but I'm not sure you could call it a fashion shoot.

Who knows. Maybe. It's just the juxtaposition of her hugging them with her eyes closed and a maternal smile, while the child is straightfaced staring at the camera. It made me laugh.

I actually don’t see anything wrong with Meghan and the Rwandan trip. She hugged kids nothing wrong with that. I have not read the book . To be honest I don’t plan to, only because the author has called Meghan a brazen hussy for smiling in the car. The misogynoir in that statement made me 🤢.He wasn’t even called out for that. Now if he had dared call Meghan that on Good Morning America then there would have been hell to pay. Amazing really. I’m so glad M isn’t acknowledged this book like all others before it.

"she just happened to end up marrying Harry."

Not sure you can say that "just happened." I think she went to quite some lengths to engineer it.

All of the Royal Family are influencers and they try and curate their image.
And any actor who achieves some success is ambitious. It does not happen by accident.

But disgusting though to accuse Meghan of being a gold digger.

There is something extremely distasteful about using impoverished African children as a backdrop for self-promotion. Ugh. But what the book gets me thinking is that this is probably par for the course for celebrities and “influencers”. So not just Meghan. Still ugh though.