Tom Bower's "Betrayal" Book discussion thread

[BasiliskStare]

My copy of Tom Bower's new book "Betrayal" has transported itself on to my Kindle . Just started it.
A thread for those reading for discussion if anyone is interested.
All opinions welcome , but no spitting , no fighting 😂

I agree. Hence the urgency right now as KC3 is still around and H&Ms coffers are running dry. But I think that PW and the civil servants have enough sway to rein KC3 in if his emotions were to get the better of him - they need to preserve / adapt the monarchy and AMW is a living example of where the monarchs emotions were wrong headed / misplaced and have put them all under threat.

Adding H&M back in would be fuel to an already hot fire. But H&M will keep manifesting and manipulating in their usual greedy grasping grifting way until PW becomes king. It’s a long game approaching 7 years since they flounced and 10 since the folie a deux got together.

Yes, I find the 'cold/boring' Catherine narrative unfair. She has to appear somewhat bland publicly due to her role : that's just how it is. She doesn't seem cold at all to me, either.

Thank you.

Exactly, especially as the married-in one, she has to be more aware.

William now doesn't seem so hot-headed. The dog bowl incident is one example, but otherwise he seems fairly mellow.

That's a shame. In Revenge he called her 'shy and unpretentious ' but said Meghan misread this as 'aloof'. Kate doesn't seem prissy to me. I suspect she's just worried about how she might be judged: she's had a horrible time on SM in the last few years

Tom Bower doesn’t seem to like women much .

My theory is that “ the source” is probably Meghan who will have no desire to set foot near the RF and is leaking stories .

Sorry wrong thread !

I agree that William has matured. The normality of the Middleton family seems to have been immensely helpful, plus his therapy has worked!

Reflecting a bit more, the decision by Meghan to separate her professional life from H is very calculated. His obsessive campaigns against the press and his paranoia were clearly not helping her try to launch herself. But later in the book H cuts a sad figure, isolated, directionless, unintelligent and smoking weed in Montecito - I really wonder how long before she decides he is superfluous - and she will do better monetising her children, something he is said to be resisting …

I wonder if there might be a situation in the future where Harry takes Archie and she takes Lilibet. Archie seems to be being airbrushed out .

Exactly like Meghan then!

Oh dear 😳

I'm on chapter 13 at the moment. Harry comes across as being utterly detached from reality in his paranoia. It's quite alarming. He sounds, to use the word flung about by H & M's 'spokesperson', deranged.

I'm only 100 pages in and I'm finding it really hard going. Page after page of stupid behaviour, wated chances, unrealistic expectations, lies, malice, temper.... I can feel H & M's delulu seeping off the page and spoiling my own mood.

In Betrayal, Tom Bower writes that it was actually Charles and Camilla who made the “racist comments/comments of unconscious bias” over tea at Clarence House, when they were just discussing what their future children may look like. Apparently all three laughed about it (probably because they mentioned the ginger gene). Absolutely nothing to do with Catherine, but she was still drawn into it and Harry and Meghan said nothing. They like to not complain or explain when it suits them.

And MM also embellished it further suggesting it was when she was pregnant and was specifically about Archie and his colour would then reduce his security provision by RF (in the Oprah interview) - whilst PH said this conversation happened before they were married. They both refused to say who it was - basically because it was the people who held the purse strings - and then this led to loads of speculation around other people for years including when Scobie said it was Catherine - and neither of them came out to correct that in Dec 24 - Catherine then was diagnosed with cancer the following month (which was not announced until March) and during this dreadful time H&M allowed the accusations to stand and their nasty SS online trolls to keep speculating about her whereabouts. They had many opportunities to correct this but it suited them not to.

Tells you all you need to know about their character.

It surprises me that Catherine is considered cold, just because she's private.

She appears to have a close relationship with all of her family, and I've seen old teachers and even her midwife behave delighted to see her and be hugged by her. It seems like genuine warmth. Yet Meghan has no relationship with her family, and every photographed hug looks contrived and or transactional. How is Meghan perceived by some as 'warm' and Catherine 'cold'? Makes no sense.

Really interesting about George Soros' charity funding the Columbian trip. I wonder how that came about.

I think MM thinks Catherine is cold, because she doesn't go in for performative hugging of complete strangers, but I agree that Catherine seems anything but cold. She clearly has a warm and loving relationship with her family and friends. She is clearly a loving and warm mother. The fact that she is also a very private person shows her good judgement IMO and I'm sure it serves her well in the extremely public life she leads.

I agree this is MM’s narrative. It’s revenge for Catherine not holding hands with her to portray the ‘bff, sisters, and equals’ image that a misguided and miseducated Meg wanted. And revenge for Harry really, really liking his SiL.

And that dimwitted vicious coward Harry went along with it, and in his fuddled head he pivoted and altered the person of Catherine. No longer the ‘sister he never had’ and ‘carefree, sweet, kind’, Harry rewrote her as the cold aloof stranger that Meg said she was. Even during that awful period of Catherine being accused of terrible things that Harry knew to be untrue, and which rightly should be laid at his door, he punished her for displeasing his wife.

I can’t imagine Tom Bower falling for the ‘cold Catherine’ though. Did he? Or are some posters confusing Bower’s description of Meg’s narrative for what Bower himself thinks?

(Sorry, haven’t read the book myself yet. It’s in a queue.)

It’s Meghans description - and some of his interpretation AFTER M&H started dishing dirt. Frankly I’m not surprised if Catherine was cold to M&H after the way they behaved. I agree with those above, I think she is cautious with strangers (with very good reason) but seems very warm and loving with people she trusts.

Mm sensed someone who wasn't going to succumb to her usual tactics and she didn't like it. We've seen the various photos of her smarming at William. We've seen her disregarding protocol with the Queen. She's found it easy to manipulate some men in the past - women are a challenge to her.

I don’t think William was having any of it either. I think he got her number early on.

I actually think M is the cold one. Everything she does is for show. She completely lacks genuine warmth and empathy. She’s also utterly self serving.