Charles ‘gave Harry a hard time over Meghan’s dad’

Duchess of Sussex blames Prince Charles’s failure to understand her family’s relationship for decision to write letter to her father.

Britain's Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Picture: Angela Weiss / AFP

The Duchess of Sussex blamed Prince Charles’s failure to understand her family’s dysfunctional relationship for her decision to write an anguished letter to her estranged father.

She said that Prince Harry was suffering “constant berating” from members of the royal family because of her difficulties with Thomas Markle.

A message to a senior aide indicates that the couple’s relationship with Charles and other royals was breaking down within months of their wedding.

Text messages and emails between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their former chief of communications also show that Harry was actively involved in briefing the authors of a biography of the couple.

Meghan, 40, texted Jason Knauf three months after her wedding and said she had prepared the draft of a letter to her father because the royal family failed to understand her position with her father and step-siblings speaking with the media.

Harry’s pain

“The catalyst for my doing this is seeing how much pain this is causing H,” she wrote. “Even after a week with his dad and endlessly explaining the situation, his family seem to forget the context – and revert to ‘can’t she just go and see him and make this stop?’ ”

She said members of the royal family “fundamentally don’t understand” and she hoped that her letter to her father would enable Harry to say that “she wrote him a letter and he’s still doing it”.

“By taking this form of action I protect my husband from this constant berating, and while unlikely perhaps it will give my father a moment to pause.”

The couple had spent a week on holiday with Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall at the Castle of Mey in the Scottish Highlands before she wrote the letter.

The text, sent in August 2018, is revealed in a release of documents yesterday (Friday) as a result of an appeal by The Mail on Sunday of a High Court ruling that its publication of parts of the duchess’s letter breached her privacy.

‘Private’ letter

The duchess had said that she had intended the letter to remain private but in a message to Knauf she said that she had addressed her father as “Daddy” as “in the unfortunate event that if leaked it would pull at the heartstrings”.

Markle did not attend his daughter’s wedding at Windsor Castle, but said he had had a heart attack. Charles stepped in to walk her down the aisle.

When Meghan’s father did not attend her wedding to Harry, Prince Charles stepped in to walk her down the aisle. Picture: Chris Jackson – WPA Pool/Getty Images

Knauf responded to the draft of the letter, recommending that it was “essential to address in some way [the] ‘heart attack’. That is the best opening for criticism and sympathy.”

The duke and duchess’s relationship with the royal family was damaged in May this year after they gave an interview to Oprah Winfrey in which they said that they had been the victims of racism within the family. The duchess, who has a white father and black mother, said that while she was pregnant with their first child, Archie, a member of the royal family raised “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born”. She said that there had been “several conversations” with Harry about Archie’s skin tone and “what that would mean or look like”.

‘Forgotten’ book briefing

She previously told the Court of Appeal that the main purpose of the letter “was to encourage my father to stop talking to the press”. She apologised to the court on Wednesday for having “forgotten” that she had provided Knauf with a detailed briefing note in December 2018 about what to say to the authors of Finding Freedom, a biography, including the background of her estranged family and her version of events of a tiara incident involving the Queen.

The documents show that Harry also encouraged Knauf to co-operate with the authors despite the couple’s earlier denials of having any involvement in the book. Harry asked Knauf to brief the authors but stated: “We have to be able to say we didn’t have anything to do with it. Equally, you giving the right context and background to them would be helpful … The truth is v much needed and would be appreciated, especially around Markle/wedding stuff.”

Harry also asked Knauf to tell the biographers that Meghan had been the victim of a “media onslaught and cyberbullying” and said that her father had been the victim of “puppeteering”.

The texts also show Meghan had instructed Knauf not to tell her own private secretary, Samantha Cohen, about the letter to her father. She wrote: “I would prefer if this was not shared in any way with Sam Cohen as I initially said.” Cohen, who had worked for the royal family for almost two decades, left the following year to take a voluntary job with an environment group.

Extracts of texts and emails were made public on Friday after an application by The Times and the Press Association. The court will deliver its judgment at a later date.

The Times