Meghan Markle’s Family Strife Ruins Royal Family’s Best-Laid Plans

Early November is always a key period for the royal family, and this should have been a wonderful week for them all, as their PR machine kicked into top gear.

We had King Charles’ 78th birthday. We had William laying out his stall for his future reign in Country Life magazine, along with Catherine’s first big interview and Prince George’s drawing of a kingfisher. We had Queen Camilla hosting her Booker Prize reception, the run-up to the Earthshot Prize, and the announcement of Together at Christmas.

What dominates the news instead? Thomas Markle in an orange jumpsuit, and Meghan expecting us to feel sorry for her.

Harry and Meghan have trashed this crucially important week for the real royal family, bringing disaster to its door.

The Royalist believes that they moved back knowing full well what was coming. We know, from The Sun, that Thomas Markle Jr. went to the FBI on July 10, and it is hard to believe he hadn’t approached Meghan before then.

I am sure Meghan doesn’t want to be interviewed by the FBI, which might explain the hasty departure from California, and the decision to stay in the U.K. for Christmas. The more protective privacy law in the U.K. is a factor too, I suspect.

And now, after the unbelievable damage she and Harry have inflicted on the royal family, Meghan wants our sympathy, in a series of briefings to her favorite outlet, People magazine.

She and Harry turned up at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, for the opening of the Lost Screen Memorial, with Meghan looking performatively upset and drained (not too drained, mind you, for a lookalike of the coat to turn up on her OneOff shopping page).

The Lost Screen Memorial is for children who have lost their lives as a result of harm suffered on social media.

Child safety? Really? She wants to talk about child safety when she has sat on allegations of child abuse in her own family for seven years?

Meghan belatedly realized it would not be a good idea to speak. The briefing blamed a lack of emotional strength. I’m not buying it. I think she decided not to speak because she thought it would look bad.

Now, via People, we get her “up days and down days,” which seems to directly channel what Catherine said about cancer, that there are “good days and bad days.”

But more despicable still is the idea that she thinks she is the victim in all of this. The picture People paints is of a woman working her way through an emotional time, still absorbing each new thing she learns.

Oh please. Pass the sick bag. She has known about this for seven years. What has actually changed is that it has come out. Everyone else now knows her family’s dark secret.

Meghan kept her father away from Harry for the 18 months before the wedding, so she obviously knew there was something up with this guy that made her unwilling to introduce them.

That mugshot of Thomas Markle in his orange jumpsuit, taken after the ankle tag episodeput him back in custody, dominated this week (he denies the charges). Like the picture of Andrew in the back of the car, it cuts through because it is set against the dignity of the royal family.

People, in another piece, dwells on her devastation and sadness over a once-trusted, once-close father. The reassurance on offer is that there are “a lot of friends and family to lean on.”

This is just not true. The most family she could possibly have is two people: her husband and her mother. She did not invite any other family members to her wedding.

I am sure Meghan is upset. But I think she is upset because she has been found out, because this has not played out the way she thought it would.

She thought the letter making these allegations would be a great gift, to prove that the media had been so wrong about her father. But it reveals that she is the one who distorted the narrative of the breakdown of her relationship with him.

Harry distorted the narrative too. He told the world on Netflix that Meghan had lost her father because of all this. In the High Court in 2020, the blame was pinned on The Mail on Sunday’s publisher, with her barrister David Sherborne talking of its “stirring up” the dispute between father and daughter. She is now saying that it is because he is a suspected pedophile.

It is an appalling situation for the royal family, and I am afraid that King Charles bears a huge level of responsibility. This tawdry scandal would be cutting through in a very different way if he had not encouraged them to return home. Instead, he let it be known that he “welcomes” the chance to see Harry and his family.

Harry and Meghan need to leave the country. If Charles had any ability to put the monarchy first, he would understand that their presence here is such a huge distraction that it is time for Megxit 2.

All of this matters because Harry is fifth in line to the throne. He is actually the second adult in line. We are told that he is a non-working royal, but his constitutional position has been absolutely unaffected since Megxit.

The king has made a huge mistake; it is not remotely appropriate for the fifth in line to the throne, who has set out to undermine the British royal family, to be living in anything other than exile.

If Harry wants to keep his commercially important titles, his HRH and his place in the line of succession, then King Charles needs to tell him that he must leave the country, as per the Megxit 1 agreement.

What has happened this week would be a much smaller deal, a sideshow, if Harry and Meghan were living in California. It is because they are back in the U.K., in the eye of the media where the institution has historical and cultural heft, that it is such a big story.

Charles needs to say: I love you as a son, but I don’t want you to stay here. But if you insist on staying, you are going to be removed from the line of succession, you are going to have your prince and HRH titles taken away, and you are going to lose inheritances, tax privileges, security privileges and the royal cars with number plates one letter different from the king’s.

The best time to issue that ultimatum would have been three months ago. The second best time is now.

We should be talking about Country Life, about William’s Earthshot Prize, about the Together at Christmas carol concert and who is going to be invited to Sandringham.

Instead we are looking at Thomas Markle in an orange jumpsuit.

King Charles needs to get a grip, or things could get even worse.

Want more royal gossip, scoops and scandal? Follow all Tom Sykes’ reporting at The Royalist on Substack or listen to The Royalist podcast on YouTube.

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