As Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s lawsuit against
The Mail On Sunday continues to move forward, private communication between the couple and Markle’s estranged father, Thomas Markle, have now become public. New court documents highlight the text messages sent to the elder Markle in the days leading up to the pair’s May 2018 wedding and show Harry and Meghan making every effort to keep the lines of communication open.Ahead of the upcoming virtual hearing that is reportedly scheduled to take place on Friday, Harry and Meghan’s legal team have supplied text messages sent by the couple to Thomas Markle only days before their wedding. The elder Markle famously did not attend his daughter’s wedding after months of speaking about their strained relationship in the press. Markle suffered a heart attack only days before he was scheduled to walk Meghan down the aisle, an honour that Harry’s father Prince Charles stepped in to fulfil.[video_embed id='1943019']RELATED: Harry and Meghan promise 'zero engagement' with U.K. tabloids[/video_embed]
E News has shared several of Harry and Meghan’s texts, which were delivered on May 14, 2018 after Thomas sent a text saying he would not be coming to the May 19 wedding. The elder Markle reportedly ignored all phones call and texts from the couple, including these ones.According to the court documents, Harry texted his future father-in-law from Meghan’s phone, writing "Tom, it's Harry and I'm going to call you right now. Please pick up, thank you" / "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 as there are two other options which don't involve u having to speak to the media, who incidentally created this whole situation. So please call me so I can explain. Meg and I are not angry, we just need to speak to u. Thanks" / "Oh any speaking to the press WILL backfire, trust me Tom. Only we can help u, as we have been trying from day 1.”Meghan also reached out to her father several times after learning via TMZ that he had suffered a heart attack. Texting her father on May 15, Meghan wrote "I've been reaching out to you all weekend but you're not taking any of our calls or replying to any texts... Very concerned about your health and safety and have taken every measure to protect you but not sure what more we can do if you don't respond...Do you need help? Can we send the security team down again? I'm very sorry to hear you're in the hospital but need you to please get in touch with us... What hospital are you at?"Meghan later followed up with another lengthy text, telling her father that she and Harry had decided to move forward with dispatching a security team, which Thomas Markle refused.According to court documents, Meghan had a missed called from Thomas just before 5 a.m. on her wedding day, but the pair never spoke or texted before she walked down the aisle or in the ensuing months.The release of the texts are the latest piece of privacy the couple have been forced to give up, but in this case, the sharing of the texts helps to correct the media’s narrative that Meghan and Harry refused communication with Thomas. On Sunday, Meghan and Harry’s representatives
sent a letter to the UK’s four biggest tabloids, including
Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, Express, and
The Sun, clearly stating that moving forward, they would have “…no corroboration and zero engagement” with the sites.In October 2019, Harry released a statement
announcing the couple’s decision to sue the Associated Newspapers, which owns the
Daily Mail and
The Mail on Sunday, two of the biggest tabloids in the UK. Calling their treatment by Associated News “a campaign by this media group to publish false and deliberately derogatory stories,” Harry references the years of abuse suffered by Meghan at the hands of the British press, who the Duke says published lies about his wife, including details about her pregnancy and the birth of their son Archie.The lawsuit against the media giant is centered around a
private letter Meghan wrote her father Thomas following her wedding. The letter was published in February 2019 by
The Mail On Sunday and according to Harry,
The Mail purposefully omitted “select paragraphs, specific sentences, and even singular words” to cast a negative light on Meghan and Harry.[video_embed id='-1']BEFORE YOU GO: Just a pug in pajamas eating a snack in bed[/video_embed]
