The Duchess of Sussex has no plans to see her father, who is recovering in hospital from a leg amputation, and has given up hope of ever reconciling with him.
On Wednesday, Meghan, 44, who has not seen Thomas Markle for many years, “reached out” to the 81-year-old with a letter hand-delivered to him in a hospital in the Philippines, where he now lives.
She has not attempted to ring him at the hospital, fearing a phone call could be overheard.
• Meghan makes contact with father Thomas Markle after his surgery
It is also understood she deleted her father’s number after her wedding in May 2018, which he did not attend. Markle has never met his son-in-law, the Duke of Sussex, 41, or the couple’s children, Prince Archie, six, and Princess Lilibet, four.
It is understood Meghan’s letter set out her feelings regarding her father’s decision to give several interviews to the media about their relationship.
Meghan is thought to believe his collusion with the media has been a major factor in the breakdown of their relationship and a key reason for why they are unlikely to ever reconcile. She has not received a reply to her letter, nor had any contact from her father since its delivery.
Last weekend Markle, who had surgery this month for a blood clot in his leg, spoke to The Mail on Sunday from his hospital bed, urging Meghan to see him “one more time before I die”.
• Thomas Markle ‘fighting for life’ after surgery
In the interview, he said: “I’ve always said I am open to reconciling with my daughter. I have never stopped loving her. I don’t want to die estranged from Meghan. I want to meet my grandkids. It might be nice to meet her husband too.”
The duchess is said to hope the letter to her father remains private. After learning of his surgery on December 3 she emailed him, but he is not thought to have seen the message at the time.
Before their estrangement in 2018, Meghan and her father had been close. After he and her mother, Doria Ragland, divorced when Meghan was six, she first lived with both parents but was later based more permanently in Los Angeles with Markle. Formerly a successful Hollywood lighting director, he funded Meghan’s private schooling and helped support her during her early years of acting.
She once described their relationship as “close-knit” and often publicly paid tribute to him before their estrangement.
In a 2014 post on her now defunct lifestyle blog The Tig, Meghan shared a photograph of her as a toddler strapped to Markle’s back. “In celebrating Father’s Day, I think of so many moments with my dad,” she wrote. “Our club sandwich & fruit smoothie tradition post my tap & ballet class — classes, which by the way, he religiously took me to on Saturday mornings after working 75+ hours a week as a lighting director. The fishing trips along the Kern River and Big Bear Lake to catch catfish or trout and cook it up for dinner, and the commitment he made to lighting my high school musicals so that they felt as grand as a Broadway show.
“The blood, sweat and tears this man (who came from so little in a small town of Pennsylvania, where Christmas stockings were filled with oranges, and dinners were potatoes and spam) invested in my future so that I could grow up to have so much. He helped me turn my bathroom into a darkroom when I was 12 because I wanted to be a photographer — shading my windows in red lighting gels and filling my cabinets with extra jugs of fixer. He put gas in my car when I went from audition trying to make it as an actress. He is the person who believed in this grand dream of mine well before I could even see it as a possibility … my dad taught me to find my light. And he taught me to always make my own box. To my dad — my thoughtful, inspiring, hardworking Daddy — happy Father’s Day.”
In 2018, Markle had been due to travel from Mexico, where he used to live, to the UK and walk his daughter down the aisle, but relations became strained before the wedding when it emerged he had staged paparazzi pictures of himself. He initially denied doing this to Harry and Meghan, but later admitted he had done it to try to improve his public image.
Shortly afterwards he suffered two heart attacks and was forced to pull out of travelling to the UK. The King, then the Prince of Wales, stepped in to accompany Meghan up the aisle. Ragland was the only member of her family among the 600-strong congregation.
Ragland and her daughter arrive at St George’s Chapel
OLI SCARFF/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Meghan remains close to her mother, who also lives in California. Ragland, 69, is a regular visitor to the Sussexes’ home in Montecito and has a close relationship with Archie and Lilibet.
In Meghan’s recent holiday special episode of her Netflix lifestyle and cooking show, With Love, Meghan, the Sussexes described enjoying Ragland’s cooking at Christmas.