In light of this week's Court of Appeal hearing, text messages between the Duchess of Sussex and her former communications secretary Jason Knauf have been made public. Meghan Markle informed her adviser in the text message that she drafted a five-page letter to her estranged father to protect Harry from the royal family's ‘constant berating.’
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The Duchess said in a text that her husband spent a week endlessly explaining the situation with her father to the Prince of Wales while staying with him – but that the family ‘fundamentally don't comprehend.’
The Gist of It
The text message which was published on Friday exposes the Duchess's dissatisfaction and frustration with the other royals. Even after Harry spent a week with his father and explained the problem, the royal family did not seem to understand, as such she wrote in the text,
The catalyst for my doing this is seeing how much pain this is causing H.
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?’
Realising that the royal family is hell-bent on not comprehending the gravity of the situation, her letter to her estranged father is just an attempt to shut mouths.
They fundamentally don’t understand so at least by writing H will be able to say to his family ‘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.
Father Trouble
Both Harry and Meghan seemed to have difficult relationships with their fathers. During a joint appearance with Oprah Winfrey earlier this year, Prince Harry said he felt let down by his father in the run-up to their stepping down as senior royals. As the couple attempted to negotiate their position in the Royal Family toward the end of 2019, apparently, the Prince of Wales stopped taking his calls. Despite that Harry claimed,
But at the same time - I will always love him - but there's a lot of hurt that's happened and I will continue to make it one of my priorities to try and heal that relationship.
To have this statement from Harry, the royal family may not be entirely wrong in expecting Meghan to sort things out with her family.