The grounds for action were therefore not the deviousness, manipulativeness, or mendacity of the Mail on Sunday, whose behaviour on that occasion had been beyond reproach. The legal and moral issues could not have been clearer. That newspaper had merely referred to the People article and quoted from a letter Meghan had written to her father, following her breach of her own privacy by revealing its contents to not one but at least five separate friends, all of whom had joined forces to further the breach of that privacy by revealing to People magazine the contents of the letter she had written. According to Meghan, she had put pen to paper to repair their broken relationship, not to lay down a paper trail in which she could bring as much ammunition as she judged necessary to blast her father into oblivion, and in so doing restore some of the damage which her icing of him had caused to her reputation. The facts spoke for themselves. If she had truly wanted to restore relations with hi, why had she failed to respond to any of his subsequent to contact her? Why had she publicised a supposedly private communication between daughter and father which he had expected would remain private but which she had revealed to not one but several of her friends? What was Meghan’s definition of private? Did it extend only to her protection of her own interests? Did it have such a loose definition that she could demand silence from the recipient of a letter whose sole raison d’être appeared to the fabrication of self-serving proof of her side of a story? Did all rights repose in Meghan and none in Tom Sr? And what about those five friends who had violated Meghan’s trust in them by repeating the confidences she had imparted for publication? Were we to accept that friends who betray your privacy are alright, because you take the view that they’re trying to protect you, but the father whose privacy has also been betrayed, by you and your friends, has no right to defend himself against the violation of privacy you have instituted?
The sheer illogic of the premises being put forward by Harry for the lawsuit against the Mail on Sunday was untenable, not that anyone in the know expected the general public to realise that. Why would they, when they only had the merest glimpse of the whole picture?
Meghan would then stretch the bounds of credulity further by maintaining that her friends had taken it upon themselves, without her knowledge, consent or approval, to fabricate the whole thing in an attempt to protect her. Were we truly to t believe that Meghan, who has made such an issue of privacy, accepted her five closest friends breaching the confidences she had placed in them as she showed them the letter she had written to her father? As they contacted, arranged and fabricated the interview they gave, to a nationwide publication as popular as Peoplemagazine? That they were free to do so without any adverse consequences, but that the father they had pilloried did not have a right to defend his actions, his interests, and his privacy, which they had violated in furtherance of their own interests? Meghan had seemingly written the letter with the purpose of reviling her father. She had revealed the contents to her friends, who had parroted her words to People. She was therefore the perpetrator of the breach, not its victim. All her father had done was defend himself against accusations Meghan’s friends had made on her behalf. According to the Mail on Sunday, which had tapes and documents to back up their claims, all her father had done was sought to set the record straight, using her own words to reveal the facts.
It is always unfortunate when families wash their dirty linen in public. The stench of grubby water sticks to all concerned, not just the guilty. Had Harry been older when his mother died, he might have understood how destructive it is to try to use the press against family. He would also hopefully have had more sympathy for those whom Diana had sullied as she poured bile over them, posing as the victim when in fact she was more often perpetrator than anything else. The place for resolving family conflicts is not in the world at large, but behind closed doors. Nor is the public arena a suitable platform for boosting oneself at the expense of family members. It always backfires, if only because with every victory, you lose a disproportionate number of supporters. The law of diminishing returns kicks in.
Meghan and Harry were aware that falling out with her father had done her image a great deal of harm. They appear to have thought that the weak link in the chain would be the Mail on Sunday for reasons which I will get into shortly. An American cousin of mine who likes Meghan - ‘She is so beautiful and elegant’ - spoke for many when he said, ‘Her father is dreadful. I wish he’d just disappear.’
Be that as it may, lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic acknowledged that Thomas Markle Sr had a cause of
