The left leg of 81-year-old Thomas Markle, father of the Duchess of Sussex, has been amputated below the knee, the Daily Beast has confirmed with sources, after he was diagnosed with a blood clot in a hospital in the Philippines.
Meghan has refused to comment, but her half-brother, who is with his father, has said that she has not been in contact amid the medical emergency.
A return to the headlines of Meghan’s feud with her father —who she cut off in 2018 after he collaborated with paparazzi to stage photographs for money—is far from ideal buzz for the new holiday edition of her Netflix show, With Love Meghan.
Indeed, Meghan’s abandonment of Thomas Markle is rapidly evolving into a disaster for her and Harry’s global brand.
A spokesman for Meghan declined to comment to The Royalist on her father’s hospitalization. Such silence may suit the emotional logic surrounding long-running family strife; it makes little sense, however, when your business model revolves around the virtues of warmth and compassion.
Thomas Markle Jr. said he rushed his father to a local hospital when his foot suddenly began to discolor. “My dad is being very brave. His foot turned blue and then black. It happened very quickly… They did some scans and an ultrasound and said the leg had to be amputated,” he told the Daily Mail.
From there, the retired Hollywood lighting director was transferred by ambulance to a larger hospital in Cebu, the city he moved to earlier this year in search of an affordable “new life” far away from Meghan, Harry, and the wall-to-wall coverage of their grievances.
Doctors took him straight into surgery. “There was no option. I was told the leg had to be removed, and it was a case of life or death,” Markle Jr. continued.
The octogenarian, who has already survived a massive stroke and two heart attacks, now faces another procedure to deal with a blood clot in his thigh; one of his doctors has warned that the next 24 to 72 hours are “critical” as they monitor the wound for infection.
Thomas Markle has conceded that he has been foolish, vain and thoughtless over the years, but Meghan’s refusal to forgive him at a time of severe illness presents a strategic problem.
Her brother is also compromised. Markle Jr. has spent years monetizing his sister’s notoriety, even appearing on reality shows to gripe about her. He recently issued a long YouTube rant against Meghan.
But begging her to speak to her dad and allow him to meet his grandchildren before he dies is hard to argue with.
Thomas himself has tried to keep his pitch simple. In September, he told the Mail on Sunday: “My only wish before I die is to meet my grandkids. I want them to know I love them and care for them.”
Even if you discount the emotional appeal and view the situation only through the cold lens of brand management, the crisis PR strategy in this situation would be pretty straightforward. You wire $20,000 for hospital bills. You send a short, carefully worded card wishing your father well and hoping for a smooth recovery. You allow it to be known, discreetly but unmistakably, that you forgive him, that you desire, in time, for some kind of peace, even if it is only ever on Zoom.
You do not have to invite him to Montecito. You do not have to let him anywhere near the children. You just have to look like the bigger person.
The Sussex argument, if it were ever articulated, would no doubt be that boundaries are healthy. That forgiveness does not always require renewed contact. That Thomas Markle has repeatedly proven himself untrustworthy with private information and is therefore too dangerous to be re-admitted into the Montecito fold. There is truth in all of that.
But the brutal reality is that global audiences are not weighing up the fine points of trauma-informed boundary setting. They are seeing a sick old man who wants to meet his grandchildren before he dies, and a daughter whose public message is “choose love” refusing to make even the most minimal gesture of kindness.
No one is suggesting Meghan Markle must forget every slight, every tabloid deal. But at a certain point, the question is not what your father deserves—it is what you, especially as the self-anointed face of modern empathy, really ought to do.
And a daughter who is building an empire on compassion could prove her authenticity by extending a little of it.
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The post Opinion: Can Meghan Markle Really Keep Her Father, 81, Cut Off Amid a Serious Health Crisis? appeared first on The Daily Beast.
