The problem was that another tabloid team was on to the ruse, using CCTV cameras to capture images of Rayner and Markle faking their pictures together, and showing how the ‘tailor’ allegedly measuring Markle was a young assistant from a nearby party goods shop, while his working out with weights had been shot on a litter-strewn waste tip that no one in their right mind would exercise in unless they were trying to stay away from prying eyes.
On 13 May, less than a week before the wedding, the Mail on Sunday revealed the entire embarrassing scam – which was seized upon and amplified by Britain’s newspapers and by broadcasters around the world. Yet again Harry’s life had been tainted by the tabloid media, and the wedding joy of his wife-to-be had been poisoned as well.
Recently released court documents show Meghan and Harry reacting with surprising calm the next day when they received a text message from Thomas explaining that he could no longer attend their wedding and that he would be issuing a public apology. But then he shut off his phone, failing to answer his daughter’s calls, leading Harry to tap out the following text message of Monday 14 May, filed in court papers in London in the spring of 2020:
Tom, Harry again! Really need to speak to u.
U do not need to apologize, we understand the circumstances, but ‘going public’ will only make the situation worse.
If u love Meg and want to make it right please call me … Meg and I are not angry, we just need to speak to u. Thanks …
Any speaking to the press WILL backfire trust me Tom …
On receiving this text Thomas Markle did not respond. But he did issue a public statement later that same day through the celebrity website TMZ, which pays contributors for ‘interesting’ items of news. Thomas reported that he had suffered a heart attack and was going into hospital for emergency surgery – while keeping his phone shut off so that neither Meghan nor Harry could get through to him.
‘I’ve been reaching out to you all weekend,’ texted the frustrated Meghan on Tuesday 15 May, ‘but you’re not taking any of our calls or replying to any of our texts … Very concerned about your health and safety …’
Markle did not respond to his daughter for a full two days following his TMZ announcement, finally texting her on Wednesday 16 May to confirm that he wouldn’t be able to attend the wedding since his doctors would not allow him to fly. Thomas went on to wonder who would be giving her away in his stead, telling Meghan that if she really needed him, then he would get out of bed and come just the same.
Thomas Markle was clearly desperate. But so were Meghan and Harry, and the window into their anguish was opened in April 2020 by the papers lodged in the legal dispute between the royal couple and Associated Newspapers over the highly personal letter that Meghan would later send her father – three months after the wedding, in August 2018 – summing up her feelings about their unhappy rupture and bidding him farewell. The Mail on Sunday published extracts from this letter on 10 February 2019 without securing Meghan’s consent – hence the lawsuit.
At this time of writing, the lawsuit is unresolved, but it is possible to read the documents submitted before the case. Thomas may have ‘told the claimant he loved her’, runs one such document, ‘and wished her the best’, but the stress he was placing on his daughter was extraordinary. To inform Meghan (and the rest of the world via TMZ) that he had suffered a heart attack but then deny her any means of making contact to see how he felt was surely no way to treat his daughter at any time – let alone in the tense and challenging days before her wedding.
Harry could not stand idly by. That same Wednesday 16 May, three days before his wedding to Meghan, he composed an angry text message to his would-be father-in-law complaining, among other things, that Thomas had not answered more than twenty phone calls they had made to him, ‘admonishing Mr Markle for talking to the press and telling him to stop’. Failing to ask how the heart operation had gone, how Markle was feeling and conspicuously failing to send him any good wishes, the prince also accused Thomas of ‘causing hurt to his daughter’.
Now Markle did respond curtly, according to the court papers. ‘I’ve done nothing to hurt you Meghan or anyone else,’ he messaged, saying that he knew ‘nothing about 20 phone calls’. And he shot off a particularly bitter zinger: ‘I’m sorry my heart attack is any inconvenience for you.’
Meghan didn’t hear directly from her father again. Phone records show that Thomas did eventually try to call her on the morning of her wedding, Saturday 19 May, but at 4.57 a.m. British time – just after dawn – and the call went unanswered. According to the legal documents, father and daughter have not spoken since.
‘Yes, of course,’ responded Prince Charles, when Harry asked if he would step in for Meghan’s father and walk her down the aisle of St George’s Chapel on her wedding day. ‘I’ll do whatever Meghan needs and I’m here to support you.’
In fact, Meghan walked down most of the aisle by herself on that day at Windsor, wearing Queen Mary’s Diamond Bandeau and trailing her happy gaggle of bare-legged bridesmaids behind her. Prince Charles was waiting at the end of the nave to escort her into the private royal chapel and to hand her over to his son.
‘Thank you, Pa,’ said Harry.
So that made ‘Pa’ one of the heroes of the day – and the other was the Reverend Bishop Michael Curry of Chicago, head of America’s Episcopal Church. Curry had been invited by Meghan and
