How the Palace Feels About Meghan Markle as More Emerges About Thomas Markle

A week ago, the shocking allegations were met with disbelief, while cautious voices urged people not to rush to judgment. But the Daily Mail’s latest report of a second cache of material allegedly linked to the Duchess of Sussex’s estranged father demands a different response.

The discovery of books and magazines about paedophilia, along with photographs — including images of young children on a beach — has been reported by the Mail to the FBI. For Meghan, the allegations represent another devastating blow.

One disturbing photograph reportedly shows Thomas Markle Sr sitting on a hotel bed with his arm around a young Asian girl. Both appear to be clothed, while other images allegedly show the same girl alone, naked and posed in sexual positions.

What makes the latest discovery particularly troubling is that the material was not found at Markle’s temporary home in the Philippines. In interviews with The Mail On Sunday last week, he admitted being a sex tourist in South-East Asia. Instead, the cache was located in a storage unit near the apartment in a Mexican border town where he had been living what appeared to be an otherwise blameless life when Meghan first met Prince Harry.

There is another significant distinction. The boxes found in Cebu, the Filipino city where Thomas Markle had been living with his father, were discovered by his son, Thomas Jr — Meghan’s half-brother.

That discovery led to an ugly exchange with his sister Samantha, who accused him of fabricating the ‘disgusting’ allegations in an attempt to make money.

The sensational discovery in Rosarito, Mexico, was different. It did not involve any member of the Markle family or allegations of a bitter domestic dispute. Daily Mail reporters made the find independently and confirmed through invoice receipts that Markle had rented the 5ft-by-10ft storage unit after moving to the town, ten miles south of the US border, in 2011.

So what effect could this deeply troubling development have on the Duchess of Sussex — and on the wider Royal Family?

What now appears clear is that the original allegations can no longer be dismissed simply as part of a sordid dispute among the feuding Markles.

Thomas Sr, who is undergoing rehabilitation in Florida after having part of his leg amputated and receiving a prosthetic limb, has denied any wrongdoing.

Markle’s home in Rosarito occupied an important place in the story of Harry and Meghan. The award-winning former Hollywood lighting director lived there in seclusion inside a gated community.

It was also there that he became caught up in the worldwide fascination surrounding his daughter’s relationship with the late Queen Elizabeth’s grandson. He famously — and foolishly — worked with a photographer to stage pictures of himself preparing for the royal wedding. After the stunt was exposed, he was humiliated and declined to attend the ceremony, having suffered a heart attack.

His relationship with his daughter never recovered.

Yet as further unsavoury details about Markle’s private life gradually emerge, it is difficult not to feel sympathy for Meghan and to understand why she has worked so hard to distance herself from the Markle family.

In hindsight, she must feel relieved that there are no wedding photographs showing her and members of the Royal Family smiling alongside the man now surrounded by such squalid and disturbing allegations.

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Had Thomas Markle walked his daughter down the aisle at St George’s Chapel in 2018, he would almost certainly have appeared in the official photographs, seated in the front row alongside Meghan, the then Prince Charles, the Queen and Prince Philip. The presence of such images would look deeply uncomfortable today.

Might this even explain some of her curious decisions to protect her children’s privacy by, for example, not posing with Prince Archie when he was born in 2019?

We now know that four months before her son’s birth, Meghan was shown a letter – written by her father’s first wife, Roslyn Loveless – in which she is said to have warned a specialist police unit that assesses threats to royals and public figures about Markle’s apparent proclivities.

This letter is thought to have been shared with other senior officers close to the Royal Family, before it was subsequently ‘lost’ by the authorities. Now, of course, it is at the centre of another row involving Scotland Yard, which has reported itself to the police watchdog for its alleged failure to alert other law enforcement agencies about the message’s contents.

It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that, had the Yard done its job at the time, Mexican and US authorities might have investigated Markle seven years ago. Instead, it has fallen to the Daily Mail to uncover his sleazy secrets. Imagine Meghan’s distress at receiving such news while preparing to become a mother for the first time.

With the benefit of hindsight, that disclosure is significant. She had always described herself as a ‘daddy’s girl’: that letter must have brought her world crashing down.

In this light, one exchange on the Oprah Winfrey sofa during that notorious 2021 interview may need to be reconsidered. Speaking about her estrangement from Markle, she observed: ‘I grieve a lot. I mean, I’ve lost my father.’

Now viewed in the light of the Mail’s shocking discovery, Meghan’s shielding of her children – including the refusal to issue newborn pictures and to continue to obscure their faces even as she posts pictures of them online – takes on a different and more nuanced complexion.

Can we honestly say that private christenings, the obscured photographs and their absence from royal pageantry were necessarily proof that she was, as some critics insisted, ‘Duchess Difficult’? Instead, perhaps we now see a mother determined to build a wall around her family, protecting her young children from dark, sinister secrets despite relentless pressure.

Meghan, it seems to me, placed family before royal duty. Given what we now know, who really could fault her?

For the King, this latest salvo of disclosures will also call for some recalibrating. There will certainly be no blame from Buckingham Palace that the allegations have overshadowed his important tour of the Caribbean. They are not Meghan’s fault.

He will naturally feel a Christian duty to offer her and Harry his support. Whether that translates into reconciliation and reintegration with the rest of the Royal Family, and in particular the Prince and Princess of Wales, remains to be seen.

‘There will be considerable sympathy for Meghan but that alone will not eradicate how family members feel she and Harry have behaved,’ says a close figure.

The other question, of course, is whether public attitudes will soften, too.

For now, all eyes will be on the contents of the 20 boxes found in Markle’s storage unit. They, as much as anything, could determine not just matters of innocence or guilt in faraway Mexico but also the reframing of the Royal Family.