Earlier this week, Meghan Markle’s messy father Thomas Markle Sr. gave yet another interview to the press: a TV interview to Good Morning Britain, just days after an exclusive with the Daily Mail. Right on time, Vanity Fair published an in-depth report on Wednesday about the Markle family, in which reporter Vanessa Grigoriadis looked into what exactly led to the breakdown of the Duchess of Sussex’s paternal side of her family.
The report is simultaneously heartbreaking, frustrating, and fascinating, and definitely worth a read, but one of the many things it revealed is further insight into just how the palace has responded to the Markle family drama. Namely, Queen Elizabeth and her staff reportedly wanted to intervene when Thomas began airing his dirty laundry publicly — but Meghan stopped them.
The drama with the Markles seemed to begin when Meghan’s half-sister, Samantha, began speaking out against her in the press. But then, according to Vanity Fair, the paparazzi started staking out Meghan’s father’s home in Mexico, and unflattering images of him buying stuff at a convenience store circulated. Samantha then concocted a plan to shape her father’s image by staging paparazzi photos of him getting fitted for his royal wedding suit and looking at a picture-book of the U.K., but that scheme was quickly revealed.
As negative press began to mount, Thomas started speaking to TMZ — and there was the back and forth about his health problems and whether he’d attend the royal wedding. More interviews followed. Meghan and Prince Harry have reportedly been coping with this by staying silent — and asking members of the royal family to not intervene, including Queen Elizabeth, who apparently wanted to do something to help. Per Vanity Fair:
“She was very concerned that it [the Markle situation] was spiraling out of control, which it was,” says one observer. “Buckingham Palace wanted to be able to do something and be proactive and make the situation go away. It was a direction from the Queen, so her courtiers were under strict instructions to sort it out. But Kensington Palace was not singing from the same hymn sheet, and that was because the message was coming from Meghan. She didn’t want to engage and thought that she could handle it on her own.”
The “observer” went on to say that this led to “tension” (the keyword surrounding all the royal drama lately!) between the two courts — and that Meghan is considering speaking to her dad again on a probationary basis as long as he does not talk to the press. Read the full report here.
