EXCLUSIVE! Meghan Markle’s sister’s feud u-turn: ‘I’ve reached out – these power games aren’t fair on Archie’

She has long been a thorn in her side, but in a dramatic U-turn, it seems that Meghan Markle’s half-sister, Samantha, is no longer wanting to take aim at her sibling. In a rare and emotional interview, she now tells of her sadness over Meghan and Harry’s estrangement from their families.

With Harry mostly unable to fly back to London due to the pandemic, it’s meant that Archie has barely seen his grandparents or his cousins – Prince William and Kate Middleton’s children, George, seven, Charlotte, five, and Louis, two. While Meghan has remained completely cut off from her dad’s side of the family.

And Samantha, 56, says she fears Archie will miss out the most if Meghan’s three-year battle with her father, Thomas Markle, continues.

Seeming surprisingly regretful of their feud, Samantha begs Meghan to reconsider their relationship and to extend an olive branch to her family – promising Meghan her life could be “fuller” with her family by her side.

“I don’t know that it will ever be repaired or replenished, and that’s sad. Yes, for my father, and yes for Archie, but it’s also sad for her,” says Samantha.

“Whether or not she looks in the mirror some day and feels a void and can’t go back in time and get it back, or not, her life could have been that much fuller had it been there. So whether she’ll admit it or not, she’s missing out.”

She adds, “Archie’s missing out on a grandad. And after all of these adults are done playing their power games, and he’s in school one day researching on the internet, he might wonder why his whole family were isolated and kept away from him. And that’s sad, because that’s not fair to him. It is what it is but, unfortunately, by that time, I don’t know that my father will still be alive.

“So, yes, it will be my father’s loss. He will go to his grave with a broken heart over it, and then Archie will ultimately feel a loss or wish that he could have met him.”

Meghan has been estranged from her dad since the week of her wedding to Harry in May 2018. It had been revealed by a Palace spokesperson earlier that month that Thomas was set to walk Meghan down the aisle at Windsor Castle, and Thomas himself later revealed how he had already attended a suit fitting organised by Meghan in the lead-up to the day.

Sadly, Thomas suffered a heart attack just 11 days before the wedding, which left him needing urgent surgery.

It was later revealed how Thomas had posed for press photographs – that had actually been set up by Samantha – showing him being fitted for a suit and reading a book about British history.

And despite telling Good Morning Britain at the time that he had hoped to change the public’s perception of him with the photoshoot, admitting his plan had “gone to hell”, Thomas continued to take part in several interviews on the couple, even slating the Royal family for being “outdated” and leaving his daughter “terrified” by piling too much responsibility on her.

The final straw for Meghan was Thomas’ choice to allow publication of a personal letter she had hand-written to him, although Thomas maintains that Meghan had secretly wanted her side of the story revealed.

The letter, which Meghan addressed to “Daddy”, was released in February 2019 and showed a clearly hurt Meghan, who asked him to “please stop”, and revealed how Thomas had “broken my heart into a million pieces”.

But Samantha is keen to add that despite her dad being divorced from Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, when Meghan was six years old, and being painted as a “recluse” in the press, in reality he and Meghan had a really special bond.

Meghan previously revealed how her dad – who has an Emmy award for his work in TV lighting – would allow her behind-the-scenes on his shows after school.

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She said in 2013, “Every day after school for 10 years, I was on the set of Married... With Children, which is a really funny and perverse place for a little girl in a Catholic school uniform to grow up.”

Now, Samantha adds, “He wasn’t estranged at all. In fact, he had given her everything. He had paid for every moment of her education, built every stage she danced on and recorded every production that she had done.

“He’d also taken her to school every day, gotten her dressed, helped do her hair, brushed her teeth and watched her from her first baby steps on up through to her graduation. He gave her [away] to her ex-husband, Trevor [Engleson] in Jamaica. Every step of the way was dad.”

Although Samantha – who along with her younger brother Thomas Markle Jnr were Thomas’ children from his marriage to his first wife Roslyn – was already 17 when Meghan was born, the family are said to have lived together for a time in LA, and there are photographs of Samantha looking in adoration at her baby sister.

And she says that despite the ongoing rift between them, she still hopes they can make amends.

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“I think I did everything. I reached out, I communicated, I was honest. You can’t have closure and bond or problem-solve and speak to each other’s hearts if you’re not speaking. So I did that, my father did that, we all reached out – she [Meghan] didn’t,” Samantha says.

Samantha even flew to the UK five months after the wedding in an attempt to reconcile with her sister, to no avail – but she says she still loves her sister and hasn’t set out to slam her in her new tell-all book.

“Clearly, my feelings were conflicted. I love my sister, you’re taught to love your family,” she says. “I love those memories [of us], they are so precious, but it has been a struggle. Maybe those struggles can help us grow together.”

Samantha Markle’s memoir, The Diary Of Princess Pushy’s Sister: Part 1, is published by CPSP.

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