Before their relationship deteriorated beyond repair, the Duchess of Sussex often spoke warmly about her father. Meghan repeatedly described herself as the apple of Thomas Markle’s eye.
In her Netflix documentary with Prince Harry, she sought to emphasise the strength of their relationship, saying: “I’ve been a Daddy’s Girl my whole life.”
That is unlikely to be a phrase Meghan will use again soon. Her 82-year-old father, Thomas Markle, has been accused of keeping a large collection of “sickening” child sexual images at his home in the Philippines. The allegation was reportedly brought to police by his 60-year-old son, Thomas Markle Jr. Thomas Sr has denied the claims, calling them “a bunch of lies”.
What makes Meghan’s Netflix comments especially striking is that they were recorded in 2022, four years after she says the Metropolitan Police received a letter containing “troubling and disturbing allegations” about her father. Meghan has said those concerns led her to stop Thomas from meeting her children, explaining that she did so “to protect them”.
Against that backdrop, her description of herself as “a Daddy’s Girl” sounds incongruous. If she believed he posed a danger, why refer to him at all — and why choose such an affectionate expression, even when speaking about the past? Much about this complicated story remains unclear.
The dispute has become an unpleasant tangle of family feuds, allegations, denials and private grievances involving the Markle family. Some members have made deeply personal accusations in public. Thomas Jr’s claims about his father have already been rejected by his half-sister Samantha, who accused him of fabricating them for financial gain.
“There is no merit in these disgusting allegations whatsoever and my brother is disgusting for making them up,” she told the Daily Mail. “He wants to destroy our dad. Shame on him.”
Some may also have forgotten that, in the year before Meghan’s wedding, Thomas Jr — then living in a small Oregon town — pulled a gun on his fiancée, Darlene, during one of their drunken arguments. One of his sons, Tyler, a marijuana farmer, also planned to profit from his connection to Meghan by launching a potent cannabis strain called Markle’s Sparkle. Growing marijuana is legal in Oregon.
A young Meghan with her father Thomas during happier times. He took her to tap-dancing and ballet lessons, followed by their traditional club sandwich and fruit smoothie
Whatever the truth behind the allegations about the images, one point is beyond dispute: Meghan and her father were once extremely close, as both have acknowledged. As a child, she would kiss the television screen whenever his name appeared in the credits of the programme on which he worked as a lighting director.
She also visited him on set whenever she could. They sometimes went fishing, while weekends were devoted to tap-dancing and ballet classes. Afterwards, they followed their familiar ritual of sharing a club sandwich and fruit smoothie. They were, by all accounts, idyllic days.
Mr Markle encouraged his daughter to pursue her ambitions so that, in his words, “I could grow up and have so much”. It is easy to understand why she once regarded him as a devoted father. He affectionately called her “Bean”, while another nickname was “Buckaroo”, a Californian-Spanish term for cowboy.
Their closeness faded as Meghan grew older, but she continued to love him until her 2018 wedding. Then, as is widely known, Thomas Markle’s decision to secretly work with a paparazzi photographer to stage a series of photographs caused a lasting rupture. The episode came as Prince Harry was appealing to the media to leave his future father-in-law alone.
Meghan cut off contact, and the two never spoke again. Thomas publicly complained about the estrangement, while many people believed Meghan had treated him too harshly and urged her to reconcile with him before it was too late. Even her most severe critics, however, may have felt some sympathy this week as the disturbing allegations emerged in the Philippines.
For Meghan, the claims must raise painful questions about the childhood she once remembered so fondly. Long-held assumptions have suddenly been thrown into doubt.
The significance of the allegations was quickly underlined by a source described as being close to the Sussexes. The intervention appeared designed to reinforce the connection between the claims and Meghan’s decision to remain estranged from her father. But was this really the moment to use a family crisis in that way?
“Now maybe people will finally understand why she has had nothing to do with her father since 2018,” the insider said.
Within hours, however, the possibility was raised that Thomas Markle might have been framed, making the earlier intervention seem premature. Before that suggestion could be properly considered, reports indicated that the alleged interest in child sexual abuse material may not have been entirely unknown to Meghan.
Significantly, Meghan’s statement did not specify when the letter concerning her father was shared with her or when she read it. Its wording nevertheless appeared to suggest that she learned of it in 2018, the year she married Prince Harry.
If Meghan was aware at the time that her father faced serious allegations, she gave little public indication of it. Just two years earlier, she had published an affectionate tribute to Thomas for Father’s Day.
In it, she recalled ‘so many moments with my dad… his commitment he made to lighting my high school musicals so that they felt as grand as a Broadway Show.
‘The blood, sweat and tears this man (who came from so little in a small town in Pennsylvania, where Christmas stockings were filled with oranges, and dinners were potatoes and Spam) invested in my future so that I could grow up and have so much.
‘He helped me turn my bathroom into a darkroom when I was 12 because I wanted to be a photographer. He put gas in my car when I went from audition to audition trying to make it as an actress. He is the person who believed in this grand dream of mine well before I could even see it as a possibility.
‘He taught me to write thank you notes, to always arrive early, to drink Arnold Palmers [a non- alcoholic cocktail of lemonade and iced tea, popular in the US], to find my light when I’m on camera… and beyond. And that, right there, is my point: my dad taught me to find my light.’ And it was always her intention that he would be the one to walk her down the aisle.
MORE STORY: Zelenskyy Tells ABC News Starlink Network Still Isn’t Fully Working
In the months before the wedding, all had seemed well between them – even if Meghan wasn’t keen on him making a speech. When Mr Markle told Harry on the phone that he would ‘like to make a little speech’ at the wedding, the prince responded: ‘You will have to talk to Meghan.’
According to Mr Markle, when he spoke to his daughter, she replied there was ‘no room’ in the ceremony for a speech by her father. Mr Markle said: ‘I was going to recount the funny story about how she broke the news to me about dating Harry. ‘Daddy, I’ve met a man… Daddy, he’s English… Daddy, he’s a prince’.’
After the staged photos scandal, Mr Markle felt too embarrassed to show his face in Windsor. And the matter was put beyond doubt when he suffered two heart attacks with just days to go.
Text messages from Meghan made plain her concern, even if she was irritated he was blabbing to the media. One read: ‘I’ve been reaching out to you all weekend but you’re not taking any of our calls or replying to any texts. Do you need help? What hospital are you at?’
In another, sent on May 17, 2018 – two days before the wedding – she said: ‘Please can I ask that you stop talking to any press. You haven’t returned any of our 20+ calls since we all spoke on Saturday morning; which only adds to the hurt you’ve been causing. We aren’t angry but we do really need to speak to u. Love M and H.’
Then, a group of five women – the duchess’s inner circle –resolved to ‘speak the truth’ about their friend to an American celebrity magazine.
It has been widely reported that the resulting article which appeared in People in February 2019 was sanctioned by the duchess herself, something that was never denied.
Certainly, it seemed inconceivable that this well-meaning quintet would run to a magazine favoured by Meghan to ‘set the record straight’ and criticise her father without her blessing.
What is noteworthy about the article now is that it conveyed Meghan’s desire to repair their relationship.
Why, you might ask, would she wish to do so if she was worried about the apparent threat he posed to her son, who was born just a few months later in May 2019?
Meghan visited her father on set whenever she got the chance and even kissed the screen when his name came up on the credits of the TV show on which he was lighting director
One friend is quoted by People as saying: ‘He writes her a really long letter… 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.
‘He knows how to get in touch with her. Her telephone number hasn’t changed. He’s never called; he’s never texted.’
So by 2019 then, Meghan, it seems, was more than alive to the possibility of reconciliation.
Where then does this leave yesterday’s statement in which she described the child sex allegations as ‘more sickening’ than was possible to imagine?
In it, Meghan added: ‘I am deeply distressed at the news that has come to light in the last 24 hours, and my thoughts are with any children who may have been harmed. In 2018, a letter was sent to the Metropolitan Police and Royalty and Specialist Protection. That letter was subsequently shared with me.’
She said that when she received the letter outlining allegations against her father, she was ‘given assurance that these were being investigated’.
Here’s where the saga takes another curious twist.
Her statement appeared to catch the Met unawares. The force could not readily confirm Meghan’s account of the letter being passed to her, although one should note that she did not specify that the police did so. Perhaps it was the original letter-writer, or someone else.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: ‘We are aware of media reports that officers from the Met’s Royalty and Specialist Protection Command were involved in the passing on of a letter in 2018. We are undertaking enquiries internally in an effort to confirm this.’
Meanwhile in Manila, the Undersecretary for the Philippines Department of Justice, Nicholas Ty, told the BBC that ‘the matter is currently being investigated’ by an anti-human trafficking and child sexual-exploitation task force.
Police have already seized Mr Markle’s computer to conduct a comprehensive digital forensic examination. Investigators are analysing the data to determine the full scope and extent of his alleged criminal activities, with a minister saying it would take one week to get the forensic results.
Before then, we can doubtless expect more twists and turns in between.