Harry & Meghan: what really happened with the Markle family

Watch the prince Harry And Meghan Markle talk directly to the camera in the Netflix series Harry and Meghan it’s a new experience, even if we’ve heard many stories before. But two voices we hear in the documentary are indeed new, and both belong to Meghan’s relatives. Doria Ragland, Meghan’s mother, talks about the difficulties of the last five years: “I’m ready to make my voice heard, that’s for sure,” she said. The other new entry is Ashleigh Hale, granddaughter of Meghan and biological daughter of Samantha Markle, Meghan’s half-sister. Together, their contribution to the series directed by Liz Garbus provides crucial insight into how the relationship between Meghan and her father, Thomas Markle, has become so tense in the run-up to the 2018 royal wedding.

Ragland opened up about her close relationship with Meghan and how she felt when she learned about Harry: “We were on the phone and she said, ‘Mom, I’m dating Prince Harry.’ And I started whispering ‘Oh my God!

The roots of the rift in Meghan’s childhood

In the second episode of the series, Ragland talks about raising Meghan as a single mother after she and Thomas separated when her daughter was two. The mother shares a memory as she passes their old house with Meghan: “I remember that one day you came home from the Immaculate Conception and you said: ‘We live above a garage’, and I thought: ‘Yes, and it’s a place fantastic”», recalled Doria.

The divorce was difficult for Meghan and her parents split custody. Meghan spent weekdays with Ragland and weekends with Markle. In one episode she recites a poem she wrote as a child about the difficulty of dividing herself between two houses: «There is so much of anyone’s childhood that you carry with you in the present. Especially when you’re the product of a divorce,” says the actress, “Even though my parents had a good co-parenting relationship, you think about how that affects what you grow up and what you want.”

Meghan then says that she did not have a close relationship with her father’s extended family, but that the latter was involved in her life: “My father lived alone, he had two adult children who had moved away from home,” he said. Susan Williger, Meghan’s friend since Immaculate Heart, she said Thomas was involved in her high school theater productions.

Royal courtship goes public

These aspects of Meghan’s childhood set the stage for what happened in the run-up to Meghan and Harry’s wedding in the spring of 2018. Her mother says her life changed dramatically after Meghan and Harry made their story public. relationship due to the intrusion of the press: ‘I felt very insecure. I couldn’t walk my dogs, I couldn’t go to work. There was always someone waiting for me, following me to work. I was haunted by the paparazzi,” she recalls. She adds that a reporter told her she could be paid to collaborate with them: “I pulled over once, he stood next to me and said, ‘I’m just trying to get a story, you know you can get a lot of money for this”, and I looked at him and I said: “This is my daughter, I have nothing to say”».

In the years since, Meghan has not spoken to her father and has denied Samantha’s claims that the two were having an affair. At this point she enters the scene Ashley Hale. She is Samantha’s biological daughter, but she has lived with her paternal grandparents since the age of two, who then adopted her. In the documentary, Hale says she hadn’t seen Samantha in years, but that she and Meghan reconnected in the late 2000s and built a close friendship that lasted throughout her career. Suits.

“I think it fills a lot of roles for me,” Hale says of Meghan. «She is a bit of a sister, there is something maternal. She is a best friend. She is a little bit of everything ».

Markle family drama makes headlines

Hale, an immigration lawyer, says she became concerned for Samantha after Harry and Meghan’s relationship became public in November 2018: “After the news first broke, Samantha began expressing angry words quite quickly against Meg. What was communicated to me was perhaps a little resentment.’ Hale says she and Samantha have stopped talking: “Some people can’t be reasoned with.”

Meghan says her niece has also been touched by the same media fervor that has touched other people in her life. “Ash has been challenged by the media, just by association. I didn’t want her life to be tormented by all those dramas.’

Ultimately, Hale was not invited to the marriage. According to Meghan, it was because the Kensington Palace press office thought that inviting some members of the Markle family and not others might cause more scrutiny from the press. “They just couldn’t figure it out, and I pity them,” Meghan said. “How to explain that this stepsister is not invited to the wedding, but that the stepsister’s daughter is her?. And so, in Ashleigh’s case, the orientation at the time was not to let her come to our wedding.’

Ashleigh Hale has never spoken to the media so far, and her inclusion in Harry & Meghan is the biggest novelty of the documentary. Hale’s version challenges the British media narrative that Meghan simply brushed aside her extended family out of insensitivity. In an earlier episode, Meghan points out that Harry’s press time was limited early in their relationship and that the influx of press was difficult for the staff to handle, but it’s at this point that she begins to explain exactly why it was. so frustrated.

In court documents, Meghan revealed the extent of her break with her father, but this is the first time we’ve heard of her shock as her father collaborates with paparazzi for pre-wedding photos. It is also the first time we hear her say that she did not cancel her father’s invitation to the wedding, contradicting the book of Omid Scobie And Carolyn Durand Finding Freedom of 2020.

Frustration with the way her family has been treated in the media and the way the attention has hurt her relations at the Palace may explain why Meghan was so interested in sharing her side of the story with this new documentary . When she talks about the media attention towards her family, she thinks that similar attention had been paid to the black side of the family, but no one had spoken: «The British media, I think, wanted my mother’s side of the family to be what could have stirred up all this drama«, said Meghan, «and suddenly there was only my mother, who is a person of class and quiet. And then there was the other part of my family who… acted differently.’