According to the Markles, in the early days of Tom and Doria’s relationship, they were extremely happy. She brought a welcome sense of family to the household, unifying them in a way that had not existed before. She herself came from a loving family, and even included the Markles in the Ragland family Thanksgiving celebrations. Tom Jr was surprised at how ‘warm and inclusive’ her parents and her half-brother Joseph and half-sister Saundra were, and commented that they were ‘the kind of family I had always wanted.’ Even after Doria’s parents divorced and her father married a kindergarten teacher named Ava Burrow, and produced a son named Joffrey Ragland, then divorced, Doria remained close to all of them.
The Raglands were a modest but by no means well-off family. Doria’s father Alvin owned an antique shop named ‘Twas New, while her mother was a nurse. They were what would be categorised as petit bourgeois in Europe and middle class in America. Doria herself was something of a hippie, which made her warmth and kindness even more appealing to the children than she would have been, had she presented in a more conventional manner. Shortly after moving into the Providencia Street house, she decided that what the family needed was something they could all love. She therefore took Tom Jr to an animal shelter, where they chose a beagle/golden retriever mix which he named Bo and which became a much-loved pet.
Like many twenty five year olds, Doria was not sure exactly what she wanted to do with her life. She had tried her hand at being a make-up artist before Meghan’s birth, but, with a baby and two stepchildren to cater to, as well as running a house which would later be described as ‘cavernous’, and a husband who worked eighty and ninety hour weeks, she found being a housewife less than appealing. She therefore took up yoga, with a view to teaching it, and only too soon was farming out babysitting duties to her mother Jeanette and stepson Tom Jr. Her seventeen year old stepdaughter had no interest in babysitting, preferring instead to be out partying with her friends. There have been reports that Samantha used to refer to Doria as ‘The Maid’, but these appear to be apocryphal, as both families remember everyone getting on well, even if, in typical teenage fashion, Samantha was focused more on having a good time with her friends than on being an integral part of the family.
Theirs was nevertheless an extremely relaxed household, with pretty much anything going. The children were allowed to come and go as they pleased, to have their friends around, even to smoke pot if they were so inclined.
According to both Toms, Tom Sr was completely besotted with Meghan from the moment of her birth. His every spare moment was spent with her. He was even more in love with her than he was with Doria and he also gave her more of his time and attention than he had ever given his two elder children. This seems to have caused some resentment with Samantha, who was jealous of the little princess when she saw the degree of attention she was getting from her father, but to say that it was a problem would be to exaggerate what was, after all, a perfectly ordinary situation, albeit one laden with possibilities for contemporaneous resentments to find inconvenient expression in the future.
There is also the suggestion that Doria felt sidelined by Tom Sr as he worshipped at the altar of his Flower, as both parents started calling the baby. Reading between the lines of what the family now says, it is likely that Doria’s reaction to Tom Sr’s fixation on Meghan was akin to Samantha’s. Not that Doria did not love her daughter. But she appears to have wanted Tom Sr to be more emotionally engaged with her than he thereafter was. Only too soon, the couple was squabbling. Doria resented being left alone for most of the time with the baby and her step-children, while Tom worked and worked and worked, then when he came home, he made a big deal of the baby, and took his wife for granted.
Up to then, theirs had been an extremely relaxed household, but as tensions developed between the workaholic Tom Sr and the neglected Doria, she too emulated the habits of her stepdaughter and started to come and go as she pleased, often parking the baby with her mother or with Tom Jr.
According to Meghan, when she was two, her parents separated. Her mother went back to her grandmother Jeanette’s house, where they lived during the week, while she returned to her father to spend weekends with him. She remembered harmony reigning supreme, with never a squabble or harsh word between the two of them. This was quite possible, though the family remembered superficial civility rather than real warmth between the couple. Meghan seems to have candy-coated a more acrid scenario, and moreover was doing so for good reason. The whispers are that Doria not only realised that she didn’t want to be alone with a husband who was never around and took her for granted when he was, but that she actually didn’t want to be with a husband at all. Thereafter, she would pursue a life of such extreme privacy that the question has been asked what, if anything, she had to hide. In choosing to lead her life in such a secretive way, she would thereafter be both resolute and independent. The fact that she did so with the quiet dignity for which she has become known, and ensured that civility reigned between her ex-husband and herself, at least until
