The drama factory that is Meghan Markle's family is still in high-production. The latest development in the Markle family soap opera involves a letter that the Duchess of Sussex reportedly wrote to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, after he skipped her wedding following his debut royal scandal.
According to a new report from People, based on interviews with several of Meghan's close friends (all of whom go unnamed in the story), there's a lot to the Meghan Markle and Thomas Markle drama that the public hasn't been privy to. For example, according to the People sources, Thomas Markle's repeated claims that he has no way to contact Meghan are totally false. The outlet cited a "longtime friend" of the Duchess as saying:
What's more, the sources claim that not only did Meghan still want—and expect—her dad to be a part of the wedding after the scandal of his staged paparazzi photos broke, but they claim that Thomas Markle was actually the one who cut off contact:
Oh, and apparently, Thomas didn't give Meghan a personal heads-up about the story leaked to the press that he was going to miss her wedding because of a heart attack and she, understandably, freaked out:
Meghan's father-in-law, Prince Charles, famously ended up stepping in to walk her down the aisle when Thomas flaked on the big day.
The truly heartbreaking reveal is about Meghan's post-wedding response to the whole situation. People's sources claim Meghan wrote her father a letter after the royal wedding, basically pleading with him to make things right and he replied with a typical Thomas Markle, fame-grabbing suggestion of his own:
"After the wedding she wrote him a letter. She’s like, ‘Dad, I’m so heartbroken. I love you. I have one father. Please stop victimizing me through the media so we can repair our relationship.’ Because every time her team has to come to her and fact-check something [he has said], it’s an arrow to the heart. He writes her a really long letter in return, and he closes it by requesting a photo op with her. And she feels like, ‘That’s the opposite of what I’m saying. I’m telling you I don’t want to communicate through the media, and you’re asking me to communicate through the media. Did you hear anything I said?’ It’s almost like they’re ships passing."
Again, since the sources cited in People's report are anonymous, it's impossible to know if they're really all that close to Meghan and what, if anything, she might have known about the interviews before the story ran. Kensington and Buckingham Palace press officials were reportedly completely in the dark about the story until "minutes" before it ran, meaning these "friends" didn't have the royal family's official okay to share the stories.
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Kayleigh Roberts is a freelance writer and editor with more than 10 years of professional experience. Her byline has appeared in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic, Allure, Entertainment Weekly, MTV, Bustle, Refinery29, Girls’ Life Magazine, Just Jared, and Tiger Beat, among other publications. She's a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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