The Duchess of Sussex has previously spoken out about her experiences as a biracial woman, with her father Thomas being white and her mother Doria Ragland being black. Her parents also split up when she was very young, so she spent much of her time growing up between two households. However, both her parents did their absolute best to make sure Meghan felt as comfortable in her identity as possible.
In an essay she wrote for Elle Magazine in 2015, Meghan recalled how her parents “crafted the world around her” in a bid to make her feel special, rather than different.
For example, one Christmas she really wanted a boxed set of Barbie dolls with a mum, dad and two children, but the sets only came in all black dolls or all white dolls.
Her father decided to buy both and switch them up so that her set would reflect their real-life mixed race family.
Meghan wrote: “On Christmas morning, swathed in glitter-flecked wrapping paper, there I found my Heart Family: a black mum doll, a white dad doll, and a child in each colour.
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Meghan Markle and her father Thomas Markle (Image: GETTY / YouTube (Entertainment Tonight), originally Channel 5)
Meghan Markle and her mother Doria Ragland (Image: GETTY)
“My dad had taken the sets apart and customised the family.”
She also recalled struggling to know which box to tick on the census when the options were white, black, Hispanic or Asian.
When she asked a teacher, they told her to identify herself as Caucasion, because she had pale skin.
When she told her parents about it, her father said: “If that happens again, you draw your own box.”
Thomas Markle has never met his grandson Archie (Image: GETTY)
Sadly, in more recent times, Meghan and her father have fallen out and are not even on speaking terms.
Mr Markle has claimed he has not seen Meghan since before the royal wedding in 2018 and that she has “ghosted” him.
In the lead-up to the wedding, he posed for paparazzi photographs and he believes it is this that damaged the relationship with his daughter.
He admitted it was a “stupid mistake” to stage the photos, in which he could be seen running up a hill lifting weights, getting measures for a wedding suit and reading a book titled ‘Images of Britain’ in a coffee shop.
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Meghan’s brother Thomas Markle Jnr (Image: YouTube (Sunrise))
However, he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that Meghan ignoring him is a “punishment which does not fit the crime”.
Mr Markle was unable to attend the wedding due to suffering a heart attack just days before the big day.
He claimed he texted Meghan every day after the wedding but got no response.
Meghan then wrote him a letter, which has become the subject of a lawsuit against Associated Newspapers.
Meghan is now back living in the US but their relationship has become so frayed that there is no sign she is taking this as an opportunity to reconnect with her father.
This is particularly heartbreaking when it is considered how close they were when Meghan was a child.
Meghan’s half-brother Thomas Jnr recalled how, when Meghan was a baby, she was the apple of her father’s eye.
He said: “He was just so happy. He spent every single minute he could with [Meghan].
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“My dad was more in love with her than anyone else in the world and that included Doria.
“She became his whole life, his little princess. He was just blown away by Meghan.”
As Meghan grew up, he stayed very involved with her life, even helping in every school production she was in, because he was a professional lighting director.
Andrew Morton, author of the 2018 book ‘Meghan: A Hollywood Princess’, claimed Meghan could “get away with blue murder” and that she could “twist him round her little finger.”
She lived with Thomas through her teen years until the summer between high school and university, when she left to stay with her mother.
