Samantha Markle reveals why Meghan didn’t invite family to royal wedding

Meghan Markle’s half-sister Samantha has given an interesting reason as to why the Duchess’ side of the family were all snubbed from the royal wedding.

Samantha Markle, the half-sister of Meghan Markle, has revealed why she thinks the Duchess didn’t invite her side of the family to the royal wedding.

Meghan, 41, and Prince Harry, 38, were wed in May 2018 at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, with Meghan’s mother Doria Ragland the only figure from her side of the family in attendance.

The former Suits actress’ father, Thomas Markle, was initially welcomed to walk her down the aisle, however he suffered a heart attack just days before the nuptials and was engulfed in an embarrassing paparazzi set-up, which ultimately led to their estrangement.

Now Samantha, 58, who has been outspoken of Meghan since she began dating Harry back in 2016, claims the Markle clan were “puzzled” when they were snubbed an invite to the big day – until they developed a theory as to why.

“We started wondering, ‘What’s up with this? Why?’ Then we started to realise, when you have a wedding and people start drinking champagne at the reception, they start talking …” Samantha said on US program, Tucker Carlson Today.

“What could the motive be for keeping both sides of the family away? The stories would come out.”

Samantha Markle has revealed why she was thinks her family was snubbed from the royal wedding in 2018.

Samantha then goes on to claim that Meghan had told “porky pies” about her work history, specifically, her claims she had worked for the US embassy in Argentina while she was studying theatre and international relations at Northwestern University. Meghan was just 20 at the time.

In a 2015 TV interview with US host Rachael Ray – before she met Harry – Meghan said, “I used to work at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires, and it was another life. Let’s say I’ve had nine lives.”

But Samantha claimed Meghan didn’t disclose that it was an internship paid for by her father Thomas, of which her uncle, Mike Markle, wrote a letter of recommendation to help her get the opportunity.

“Our Uncle Mike who worked for the embassy, as a favour to Dad, Dad paid for a five-week study program [and] Uncle Mike threw in a letter of recommendation to be kind, even though he’d only met Meghan when she was a baby,” Samantha claimed. “A five-week study program doesn’t equate with working at the embassy, which she told Rachael Ray and [journalist] Craig Ferguson on live television. So all of these lies started coming out.

“According to other journalist, we found out a lot of porky pies were probably told to the royals and to Harry when they met her, and in order to cover up [lies, she didn’t invite us].”

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex on their wedding day in May 2018. Picture: Steve Parsons – WPA Pool/Getty Images

Samantha then went on to role play what the royals would have said at the wedding when the supposed “lies” emerged.

“‘Oh my God, you didn’t get grants and scholarships?” Samantha speculated the royals would have asked Meghan. “‘You never worked for the embassy? What do you mean you only did a five-week study program?’

“So it makes sense, [Meghan thought] ‘Oh my god, I’ve got to keep everybody away because if they start talking, the lies come out.’”

Back in 2019, Mike, who is now 83, hit out at Meghan for neglecting her family, claiming he’d “probably done more for her than most”, despite Samantha’s aforementioned comment that he’d only met her when she was a baby.

“I personally talked to the ambassador in Argentina for her. I helped her out and I didn’t ask for anything in return,” Mike told Daily Mail in 2019. “She didn’t invite a lot of people [to the wedding], so I don’t feel that bad, she didn’t discriminate against me.

“It would have been nice for her to have some of her family, but I don’t understand her, I don’t communicate with her because I understand they don’t accept mail at the Palace.”

In the six-part Netflix series Harry & Meghan, which was released in December, the Duchess said she was not close with most members of her side of the family, with the exception of Samantha’s biological daughter Ashleigh Hale, whom Meghan had been friends with for many years.

However, Meghan revealed she was advised by royal aides not to invite Ashleigh, who is her niece, to her wedding, so as to distance herself from Samantha’s repeated attacks.

Meghan Markle and her niece Ashleigh Hale, who is the daughter of Samantha Markle. Picture: Netflix

“How do we explain that this half-sister isn’t invited to the wedding, but that the half-sister’s daughter is?” Meghan said in the documentary series.

“With Ashleigh, the guidance at the time was to not have her come to our wedding. I was in the car with H [Harry]. I had her on speaker phone and we talked her through what guidance we were given and why this assessment was made … and that’s painful.”

Meghan and Ashleigh have since reconnected.

“I think I said I was hurt on some level, but I understood where it was coming from,” Ashleigh said to Netflix producers.

“To know that it was because of my biological mother that this relationship that‘s so important to me was impacted in that way … to feel like, because of her it was taken away, has been hard.”