Expert Points Out the Hole in Prince Harry's Story That Should Have Been Front-Page News
From laughing gas canisters to hospital discharge rules, an expert points out the specific flaws in Prince Harry’s medical narrative.
While many royal experts have spent years speculating on the rift between the Royal Family and the Sussexes, commentator Shauna Kay argues that Tom Bower’s latest biography, Betrayal, finally provides a ‘verified, validated timeline’ needed to anchor the discussion in reality. In the recent episode of The Vintage Read Show, she observed that the royal author’s careful research exposes a ‘duplicitous’ strategy that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle began using far earlier than the public realized. Kay’s most striking observation, however, focuses on a specific medical hole in the Duke’s narrative—one she believes Bower should have pursued with more vigor.
According to Kay, the true value of Bower’s work lies in its ability to pinpoint exactly what Harry knew and when he knew it. She points specifically to Prince Philip’s funeral—revealing that while the world saw a family struggling to reconcile, Betrayal provides a more cynical reality behind the Duke’s intentions than the version portrayed in Spare. In a striking revelation, Bower confirms that hundreds of Zoom calls with ghostwriter J.R. Moehringer and extensive Netflix pre-production were “locked in” before Harry even set foot on UK soil. “That is the con man aspect because he was implying to them that maybe we can come to some sort of understanding. There he is looking his father and brother in the eye, knowing what was coming their way, knowing what was about to befall them.”
While Kay remains impressed with Bower’s chronological version of events, she expressed disappointment that the author failed to challenge the specific narrative surrounding Prince Archie’s birth. She pointed to Harry’s own description in his tell-all of a nurse changing a ‘canister’ of laughing gas—a detail she claims is a physical impossibility at the Portland Hospital. “The Portland does not use portable canisters. They use piped medical gases… That means that the…laughing gas comes through the wall, not through a tank. There is no canister to run out,” she observed. More critically, Kay identifies a massive discrepancy regarding the timing of Markle’s discharge from the hospital.
The Duke had previously noted that they went back to Frogmore Cottage within two hours, even though the Duchess reportedly received an epidural. “In UK obstetric practice… an epidural requires—and this is by law, this isn't optional—a minimum of 4 to 6 hours of post-birth monitoring… 2 hours is medically impossible,” she added, arguing that by failing to deconstruct these claims with the same ferocity he used for other parts of Spare, Bower missed the opportunity to highlight what she calls a “deliberate plan to confuse the public and the palace.”
According to Kay’s reading of Betrayal, the feud between the Sussexes and the monarchy was less of a family disagreement and more of a calculated, commercially minded exit. She highlights Bower’s claim that Markle prompted the Prince to “monetize his anger,” recognizing that their public grievances were the key to their financial independence. Finally, the commentator pointed to the involvement of high-level American political figures as proof that the Sussexes’ exit was never just about privacy. Kay highlighted the significance of Hillary Clinton’s secret visit to Frogmore, arguing that the meeting turned a private family issue into a “hotbed of political intrigue.”
By validating the timeline of these meetings and media deals, Kay argued, Bower has proven that Harry and Markle’s “exit plan was already underway” long before the public—or perhaps the Royal Family—realized what was happening.
