Longstanding rumors that Meghan Markle fell out with her dad many years ago were given new credence by reports Thursday that their difficulties go back some time.
The new insight into the world’s most high-profile father-daughter relationship breakdown comes courtesy of DailyMail.com, which claims that Meghan and her dad have “had problems” for years, dating from well before the time when she met Prince Harry.
The report goes some way to making sense of one of the most pressing questions swirling around the Thomas Markle debacle, namely why the royal family did not seek to bring Meghan’s dad into the fold way ahead of the royal wedding.
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It is perhaps, the area where the Meghan and Harry’s youthful team are most glaringly at fault: Why, many have asked, was he left to his own devices, stewing in Mexico, where the temptation to collaborate with a paparazzi photographer apparently became overwhelming?
Why was it that Harry was not introduced to him well ahead of time—after all he was dating Meghan for almost two years before they were married—and plenty of space was made available in his schedule for him to meet her mother?
Could it be that it was longstanding tension that made Meghan not want to have her dad around in the run-up to her wedding? Did she already have an inkling he was not to be trusted long before he started talking to the media for money?
We do know that the two fell out when Meghan was younger.
In a video that surfaced in the run-up to the wedding, an 18-year-old Meghan was seen being driven past her father’s house on the way home from an audition to be one of Shakira’s backup dancers. In it, she says she wouldn’t stop there because “We aren’t on the best of terms.”
Of course, Meghan wouldn’t be the first to have a fight with her father during adolescence, but the new claim of ill-feeling between the two suggests that disharmony may have gone on into adulthood.
This may help to make sense of the otherwise baffling fact that Mr. Markle declared himself bankrupt over $27,000 of credit- and store-card debt in 2016, when his daughter was making a lot of money as a star of the show Suits.
Did Meghan even know what her father was going through?
The reactivation of deep-seated resentment could also explain why Mr. Markle appears to have gone off the deep end in his attacks on his daughter in so short a space of time; don’t forget that, amidst his ragings, he has conceded Meghan and Harry did call him after their wedding, did forgive him for the paparazzi setup, did send an aide to Mexico to collect him and did have shoes and suits made specially for him for the wedding. Yet just six weeks after the nuptials, he betrayed her by giving a paid interview to British TV.
Little surprise perhaps that DailyMail.com reports, “A reconciliation is completely off the table at the moment. There’s no chance right now—he’s been a complete embarrassment.”
