Meghan Markle Put Herself First Post Royal Exit — But Was 'Thwarted by Her Own Ego,' Says Expert
Royal author Tom Bower claims Markle's years-long bid to reestablish herself as a global figure of influence has been consistently undone by her own hand.
Meghan Markle has spent her years since leaving royal life trying to prove she is more than the institution she walked away from. However, according to royal author Tom Bower, the effort has been relentless, calculated — and repeatedly 'thwarted' by the one thing she cannot seem to control – 'her own ego.'
The cracks, Bower suggests in his forthcoming book Betrayal: Power, Deceit and the Fight for the Future of the Royal Family, were very much visible from the very beginning. Back in September 2022, Markle's much-anticipated return to the UK for the One Young World conference in Manchester, her first significant public appearance on British soil since the couple's departure two years earlier, was supposed to be monumental.
The organization's co-founder, Kate Robertson, and her daughter, Ella, had been nervous about extending the invitation from the outset. 'Megxit' was still raw, the Sussexes' anticipated return to Britain charged with intense speculation. Their unease, it turned out, was well-founded. When Ella Robertson read through Markle's proposed speech on the Autocue ahead of the event, her reaction was not only disappointment, "She's f***ed it," she said — a verdict Bower recounts in the book, as serialized in The Times.
Instead of speaking as agreed about One Young World and its mission, Markle had written a speech focused almost entirely on herself — intending, Bower writes, to say 'I' nearly fifty times in just ten minutes, before an audience of 2,300 people. The organization, founded in 2010 to bring young global leaders together to tackle the world's most pressing challenges, had become, in Markle's hands, little more than a backdrop.
As per Bower, the conditions surrounding the event were equally revealing. In Manchester, Markle's publicist had demanded tight ticketing controls to exclude any protesters, a ban on spectators gathering outside the venue, and a wholesale exclusion of mainstream journalists from the hall. "Only Omid Scobie, a trusted author, and the photographer Misan Harriman were to be given access to the event," Bower wrote, adding that "Harriman's photos would be published only in Town & Country magazine. Not the mainstream media." Bower suggested that sweeping restrictions might undermine Markle's stated ambition to be recognized as a global philanthropist, which he summarily dismissed, writing, "Risks were unacceptable to the Duchess."
And ever since, the machinery of image management has been running harder than ever. Additionally, Bower wrote that Markle's team had negotiated engagements across Hollywood, Los Angeles, Washington, New York, and Paris, each appearance carefully calibrated to signal the next chapter of her public evolution. There were garden videos posted to Instagram timed to coincide with royal milestones. There was a surprise appearance at Kevin Costner's Santa Barbara charity party — an event she had, Bower notes, 'disdained' the previous year — at which she arrived wearing an estimated $325,000 worth of jewelry. "Inevitably," Bower writes, "it included a piece originally owned by Diana."
For Bower, the diagnosis was that it was not a lack of ambition that derailed Markle's post-royal reinvention, but an excess of it. The years since 'Megxit' have been defined, he suggests, less by what she failed to attempt than by what she could not stop herself from attempting. The machine has never stopped running. Whether it has ever truly arrived anywhere is, perhaps, the question that lingers longest.
