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Meghan Markle has said that she turned to Queen Elizabeth II for advice on what to do about her father when he started to give disparaging interviews about the royal family following her 2018 wedding.
During the fifth episode of the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex describes Thomas Markle's criticism of the royal family in 2018 as "very embarrassing for the family," and "a problem that needed to be solved...they wanted me to make it stop."
"And of course, I reached out to Her Majesty and was like 'This is what's going on. What do you want me to do? I want…whatever advice you have,'" she said.
"But ultimately, it was suggested by the queen and the Prince of Wales [now King Charles] that I write my dad a letter."
This letter was written in August 2018 and Meghan describes how she went to "great lengths to get that letter to my dad discreetly."
In October 2018, Britain's Mail on Sunday published extracts from the letter, which was provided to the newspaper by her father. Thomas Markle called its contents a "dagger to the heart."
The letter expressed Meghan's distress at her father's actions following her marriage. Meghan told the Netflix docuseries the reaction to the leak was "horrendous."
Both the duchess and Prince Harry decided to sue the newspaper for printing the private communication between a father and daughter.
"We sat down with the lawyer for the institution [monarchy] and senior members of the palace," she said. "And it was in those meetings that I reminded them I wrote that letter at the guidance of senior members of the family."
After alleging that the palace stalled in bringing legal action against the newspaper, the couple discussed the decision to bring the case privately.
This legal case is what Meghan identifies as a turning point in her relationship with the British media. "Everything changed after that," she told Netflix viewers.
The lawsuit lasted two years. Meghan eventually won the case after the newspaper appealed an initial ruling in her favor.
The Court of Appeal upheld the judge's finding that Meghan had a "reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of the letter and those contents were personal, private and not matters of legitimate public interest."
In May 2022, the duchess faced criticism for not ending her estrangement with her father and visiting him after he reportedly had a stroke. Before this, he had planned to travel to London at the invitation of a right-wing news channel for Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee, which Meghan and Harry were scheduled to attend.
Meghan's relationship with her father is complicated by the lawsuit launched against her by half-sister Samantha Markle.
Samantha Markle is suing over the comment the duchess made to Oprah Winfrey that she "grew up as an only child" and over information supplied to the authors of the biography Finding Freedom.
Newsweek has approached Buckingham Palace for comment.
Update 12/15/22, 5:25 a.m. ET: This article was updated to add extra information.
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About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more