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Originally Posted by jet
Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan ‘rejected offers to help protect Thomas Markle’
Roya Nikkhah, Royal Correspondent
Sunday July 26 2020, 12.00pm, The Sunday Times
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex blame the media for their broken relationship with Meghan’s father and his absence from their wedding, according to a new book.
Thomas Markle, 76, a retired lighting director who lives in Mexico, failed to attend their wedding after suffering from heart problems after it emerged that he had collaborated with paparazzi. A new biography of the Sussexes describes the saga in May 2018 as a “public drama” that made Meghan “feel embarrassed”.
In Finding Freedom, serialised in The Sunday Times today, a source close to the couple said of Meghan’s father: “He would have been at the wedding if the media had left him alone.” Meghan also told a friend: “He’s vulnerable. He’s been baited. A lot of the tabloid journalists have been coaxing him and paying him. I don’t know if he really even had a chance.”
However, in the latest twist surrounding the account of events presented in the book, palace aides told The Sunday Times that Harry and Meghan had refused to “engage” with Markle during their courtship and had rejected offers to help protect him.
It is understood the couple “repeatedly” ignored advice to meet Thomas Markle, before and after their engagement was announced in November 2017. They also rejected suggestions from aides about how to help Markle, who courtiers feared would be overwhelmed by media scrutiny without support from the couple and the royal family.
At the time of the Sussexes’ wedding, a senior royal source told this newspaper: “We repeatedly sat down with Harry and Meghan before the engagement announcement to say this needed to be handled sensitively, but that it had to be handled. We desperately asked them to engage with Thomas, but they wouldn’t. Aides also offered to go personally and see him to try and find a way to protect him. There is genuine disbelief and bemusement in the household at the couple’s approach to him and that Harry has still not met his father-in-law.”
Another aide said: “Thomas is troubled, but Harry and Meghan would not engage in the issue of going out to see him and for Harry to meet him. It was raised before their engagement and again constantly in the months afterwards, leading up to the wedding. Everyone knew it would be a huge issue that would explode if they didn’t address it and deal with it.”
It is thought that Meghan has not seen her father since she began dating Harry in the summer of 2016. The couple spoke to Markle on the phone and texted him during their romance, but the duchess ended all contact with him after their wedding. Harry has still never met Markle.
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The mere fact that Harry hasnt yet met Mr Markle speaks volumes...If her father was so vulnerable, why wasnt she there for him.