For years, Meghan Markle has faced scrutiny in the British and American media, particularly over her estrangement from her 82-year-old father, Thomas Markle Sr.
That rift has been the subject of tabloid fodder ever since the run-up to her wedding to Prince Harry at Windsor Castle in 2018.
The Duchess of Sussex’s father, a retired lighting and photography director, did not attend the wedding, saying he had suffered a heart attack days after it was reported that he had staged paparazzi photographs that were sold to media outlets. He has never met Harry or his grandchildren.
But in the years since, he has given numerous interviews to journalists, painting a portrait of a cruel daughter who shunned him after marrying into the British royal family and going so far as to leak a private letter she had written him after the wedding to a newspaper. He has also pleaded in interviews for a reconciliation, saying last year that he did not want to die while still estranged from his daughter.
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Meghan and Harry said the relentless scrutiny from the British media was among the reasons they had decided to leave the U.K. when they quit their royal duties and moved to the United States in 2020.
Their return to the U.K. this summer with their two children—7-year-old Prince Archie and 5-year-old Princess Lilibet—has, naturally, focussed fresh media attention on the couple, and prompted a wave of negative articles.
But a revelation on Friday could change everything.
Meghan revealed her decision to remain distanced from her father and not allow him contact with her children was borne out of a desire to protect them after she learned in 2018 of "troubling" allegations against him that were being investigated by police.
The revelation came after The Sun, a British tabloid, reported on Thursday that Markle Sr. was under investigation following allegations made by his son. Thomas Markle Jr, 60, told the newspaper that he reported his father to police after discovering child sexual images while clearing out his father's former home in the Philippines.
Markle Sr. has denied the allegations and has not been charged with any offense.
In a statement provided to Newsweek, Meghan said she was "deeply distressed" by the reports about her father. She also revealed that a letter containing "troubling allegations" about her father had been sent to the Metropolitan Police Service’s Royal and Specialist Protection unit in 2018, which later shared the letter's contents with her.
"It made troubling and disturbing allegations against my father and I was given assurances that these were being investigated," she said. "I hope it can now be understood that, despite certain media publications’ distortion over the years, any distance from my father and my choice to not allow him to have contact with our children was for one reason: to protect them."
Her statement certainly changes the narrative and will attract sympathy as well as explaining why she has refrained from speaking openly about her relationship with her father.
It should be pointed out that Meghan’s statement did not specify the nature of the allegations raised by the letter in 2018 or establish whether they were connected to those reported this week.
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Newsweek understands that Meghan was made aware of the allegations in the summer of 2018, after her wedding to Harry in May. It’s likely that any ongoing investigation would have prevented her from speaking openly about the reasons for the rift with her father.
That also coincides with the timing of a letter she wrote to her father in August that year, urging him to stop speaking with the media. Her father leaked the letter to the Mail on Sunday, a British newspaper, which published extensive portions of it, alongside an interview with Markle Sr. who described it as "like a dagger to the heart."
Meghan later sued the newspaper's publisher for invasion of privacy and copyright infringement, winning a resounding victory in 2021 when a judge ruled that publication of the personal letter was "manifestly excessive" and unlawful.
Though the full contents of that letter have never been published, the reported allegations against her father now shed new light on evidence that was given by Meghan during the case.
In a written statement, she said she had "privately endured the media onslaught" surrounding her father, but it was only when he began criticizing the royal family that she felt the need to pen the letter.
She wrote that she had not believed that her father "would sell or leak the letter, primarily because it would not put him in a good light."
She wrote: "I had not heard from him since the week leading up to our wedding, but it seemed incredibly unlikely that he would disclose the contents because they contained unpalatable truths and would thereby negate the falsehoods the media had attributed to him. The main purpose of the letter was to encourage my father to stop talking to the press."
Asked if those remarks were a reference to the allegations she said had been reported to London police, a spokesperson for Meghan told Newsweek that they could not comment for legal reasons.
Experts say that the allegations, though not proven, could change the public's attitude toward Meghan.
"I think they will also help her gain a certain amount of public sympathy at a time when that has seemed in short supply in the U.K.," Pauline Maclaran, a professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, who co-authored Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture, told Newsweek.
"Her distancing from her father now seems vindicated and certainly changes the narrative about her being heartless toward him," she said.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Alfred Joyner and Tony Phillips.