Harry acquitted himself admirably. He was warm, concerned, considered, charming and interesting. He came across as a genuinely nice and kind man. Like his mother, he was no intellectual, but like her, he had emotional intelligence in spades. Then he committed the solecism to end all solecisms. Speaking about how successful Christmas at Sandringham with Meghan had been, he said that she had finally got the family she had never had.
My sons are friendly with Meghan’s nephew following their appearance with him on MTV’s The Royal World. He and his mother have stayed with us as guests at our castle in Sussex. I do not think I am breaching confidences to repeat that the whole family was upset when they heard Harry expunging them out of existence. The fact is, both branches of Meghan’s family had been close to her. Tom Sr had literally bankrupted himself supporting her. By her own account, he had been an excellent father. Her uncles had done whatever they could to help her. ‘Everyone was there for her.’ Tom Sr ‘was a wonderful father and grandfather. Nothing was too much trouble for him. He is a truly kind, decent man, just as Meghan said on her blog. She wasn’t lying when she said all those things about him.’ According to Meghan, Tom Jr, Samantha, Tyler and his mother Tracey Dooley, Tom Sr is a generous man who would give you the shirt off his back if he thought you needed it. The Markles had played a far larger part in Meghan’s upbringing than the Ragland family. Her mother had been away for large stretches of time. Although the Ragland family also emerged as warm, by the account of Doria’s own half-brother Joseph Johnson, the times they spent together were not so frequent, but nevertheless ‘it was always nice for family to get together. It was always a good time. We’ve got a little, small family: not a lot of cousins, uncles and that kind of thing that we know of. So when we got together, we were always happy to see each other.’
Samantha was the first off the mark. She waded in accusing Meghan of being a ‘shallow social climber’ and said their father had always given ‘Meg everything.’ While the public might have thought that Samantha was just a jealous sibling, their father hinted that the reason might have something to do with Meghan ignoring Samantha’s approaches. The two sisters had never been close, but nor were they estranged. They simply lived in different parts of the country. Meghan spurning Samantha’s approaches was therefore surprising. It caused hurt, and the wounded party struck out. Nevertheless, they were family, and families might have their ups and downs, but they still remained family. Or so the Markles believed.
The wedding was scheduled for the 19th May 2018. As the day neared, both the Markle and Ragland families were humiliated ‘in front of the whole world’ when only her mother and father received invitations. Her paternal uncle Michael, who had organised the internship for her with the American Embassy in Buenos Aires, was perplexed. So too were her maternal uncle John Johnson and his wife. Her nephew Tyler, whom she used to babysit when they were young, wished her well and wondered why she wasn’t inviting everyone. They were certainly a small enough number to take up very little space. Although they had all scattered to the wind, living in different places - some in Florida, Mexico, California, Oregon etc. - they had all been on good terms with Meghan. Even Samantha had. None of them had fallen out with her, though some, such as her brother and sister, did not speak to each other. Up to the last moment, several members of the family hoped that their invitations were on the way.
When it became apparent to the whole family that they had been deliberately overlooked en masse, some of them became angry. Although some refrained from going public, Tyler’s father Tom Jr wrote an open letter to Harry, stating in part, ‘As more time passes to your royal wedding it becomes very clear that this is the biggest mistake in royal history.’
Such conflict brought no credit to anyone. Although the press loved the drama of it all, the reality was that the whole thing was just embarrassing and uncalled for. While some commentators thought Meghan’s siblings behaved badly by berating her, others thought that they were justifiably outraged. Whatever people’s points of view, the one unarguable fact was that failing to invite her family had rebounded badly on Meghan, who was barraged with bad publicity.
What the public and the press did not know was that the anger of not being invited to the wedding was not limited to the paternal and maternal branches of Meghan’s slighted family. Practically none of the European royals was invited either, nor were the many royal cousins in England who are normally asked to the weddings of the Royal Family. This was in defiance of the established custom whereby even third and fifth cousins are asked, weddings and funerals being the two occasions in life when royal and aristocratic clans gather together in tribal affirmation.
Although the public were never privy to this, anger amongst the relations turned to fury when it emerged that Harry and Meghan had not filled St. George’s Chapel to capacity. Aside from the hundreds of empty seats in existence, there were the hundreds of charity workers, strangers all, who had been asked. But most offensive to the many relations who had been overlooked was the presence of celebrities Harry and Meghan barely knew. ‘Pray tell,’ said a cousin who would ordinarily have been present, ’why are we not there but George and Amal Clooney, Oprah Winfrey, and the Beckhams are? The invitation list smacks of a career move.’
Behind the scenes, an even worse scenario was unfolding. This played right into the hands
