There will be mixed emotions when Thomas Markle wakes up today at his clifftop home in Rosarito, Mexico.
Today is her 80th birthday, but among the many cards and gifts waiting to be unwrapped, there probably won’t be anything from her famous daughter, Meghan.
Tom Markle doesn’t even expect a phone call. Not even an email.
“I’ve never been a big fan of birthdays, but I know the person I most want to hear from, Meghan, won’t be getting in touch with me,” he lamented to my colleague Caroline Graham in The Mail on Sunday.
Thomas Markle told The Mail on Sunday that he does not expect to hear from his daughter Meghan on her 80th birthday.
Meghan sought advice from the late Queen on how to repair her relationship with her father, and the monarch suggested she write a letter to him.
‘I would love to meet my grandchildren, but at this point I’d settle for a photograph.’
Mr Markle has never met Prince Archie, five, or Princess Lilibet, who turned three last month.
She has also never met her son-in-law, the Duke of Sussex, although the two were introduced over the phone by an excited Meghan when their romance began.
Markle became estranged from his daughter in 2018. After posing for photographs in controversial circumstances, he was unable to walk her down the aisle. The former Hollywood lighting director had suffered two heart attacks on the eve of Harry and Meghan’s wedding. The couple have not spoken to him since.
Queen Elizabeth was so alarmed by Meghan’s estrangement from her father that the late monarch suggested Meghan write to him.
In her Netflix documentary series, Harry & Meghan, the Duchess confirmed that she had sought the Queen’s advice.
As she put it: “I contacted His Majesty and said, ‘This is what is happening. What do you want me to do? I want… any advice you have.’”
‘In the end, the Queen and the Prince of Wales (now King Charles) suggested that I write a letter to my father.’
And so she did, although not with the results that Queen Elizabeth perhaps intended.
Speaking later about the lengthy letter she received, Markle said: “I thought it would be an olive branch. Instead, it was a dagger to the heart.”
The late Queen had realised the significance of Meghan’s estrangement from her father.
“Meghan’s public disagreements with her father set off alarm bells at the time,” a royal source tells me. “Her Majesty realised the potential damage they could cause to the wider Royal Family.
“In retrospect, the Queen may have had an inkling of what was to come,” the source says.
Since then, of course, Meghan has not only distanced herself from Markle, her other children and her half-brother and sister, but also from the Royal Family at large, as another birthday this week reminded us.
In his memoir Spare, Prince Harry described Queen Camilla as “dangerous” and a “villain” who had sacrificed him “on her personal PR altar”.
Harry and Meghan, pictured at the recent ESPY Awards in Hollywood, Harry and Meghan have given the impression that they are keen to patch things up with the Royal Family, writes Richard Eden
Queen Camilla, who turned 77 yesterday, was so shocked by Harry’s attacks on her in his memoir, Spare, that one of her closest friends, the Marchioness of Lansdowne, took the highly unusual step of speaking out publicly to defend her.
In the book, Harry described his stepmother as “dangerous” and a “villain” who had sacrificed him “on her personal PR altar.”
According to Lady Lansdowne, the Queen was hurt by the personal attack: “It bothers her.”
In recent months, Harry and Meghan have given the impression that they are interested in improving relations with the Royal Family.
They seemed eager to make clear that they had enjoyed a friendly telephone conversation with King Charles on his birthday last autumn.
Harry certainly rushed to see his father, flying more than 5,000 miles across the Atlantic after the King’s cancer diagnosis was made public.
Still, the Sussexes seem determined to risk conflict.
Harry’s decision to go ahead and collect the Pat Tillman Award last week, despite protests from thousands of people including the late American hero’s own mother Mary, was a sign of the couple’s stubborn refusal to heed criticism.
Now that his popularity appears to be waning in the United States, it may be time to put things right in Britain.
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