The Queen had a private talk with Meghan Markle encouraging her to mend the rift with her father Thomas Markle, a royal expert has claimed.
In the soon-to-be-released book The New Royals, expert Katie Nicholl claims the pair had spoken about Meghan’s relationship with her father after Meghan’s wedding to Prince Harry sparked drama between them.
There were plans for Thomas to walk Meghan down the aisle at her 2018 wedding, but then he was caught out reportedly staging paparazzi photos days prior.
After news he had been colluding with the paparazzi, Thomas pulled out of the wedding due to a heart attack, and instead watched the royal nuptials from his bed.
Speaking to the Daily Mail following the wedding, Thomas said he and Prince Harry had a heated phone call after Harry had warned him to avoid the paparazzi.
“Harry told me that I should never go to the press. That it would end in tears. He said, ‘They will eat you alive’. He was right,” Thomas said in the 2018 interview.
Thomas said he hung up on Harry during the phone call after the Prince reportedly told Thomas he should have listened to him.
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According to The New Royals, the Queen was unhappy with how the whole situation was handled.
“The Queen could see how damaging the situation was between Meghan and her father and she did speak to Meghan about it and tried to encourage her to talk to Thomas,” Katie wrote in the book.
She added a royal source had told her The Queen thought “the whole thing was quite badly handled with Thomas Markle and if it had been done differently, it would have come out better”.
Prince Harry had also never met Thomas in person, which Katie claims the Queen thought was a mistake.
“I think she felt that Harry should certainly have met Thomas Markle and it was unfortunate that that had to happen,” Katie wrote.
Queen’s ‘dearest wish’ before her death
Harry and Meghan later stepped down from royal duties in 2020, two years after their wedding, causing a rift between the pair and the royal family.
According to royal author Robert Hardman, the monarch “adored Harry right to the end, and Harry adored her.”
Robert spoke to People on Friday, and revealed one of the Queen’s ‘dearest wishes’ after her grandson moved to California.
“I think she was one of the conduits between Windsor and California, it would have been one of her dearest wishes that [the family] patch things up,” he told the publication.
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