The Duchess of Sussex said she chose to write to her father, Thomas Markle, to protect Prince Harry from the Royal Family’s “constant berating” over his media interviews, text messages reveal, according to theĀ BBC.
Meghan told ex-aide Jason Knauf the royals did not understand why she could not visit her estranged father’s home in Mexico to “make this stop”.
She also said she had seen the “pain” the situation was causing Prince Harry.
The messages were released by a court on Friday after a media application.
Meghan, 40, won her privacy case against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), the publisher of the Mail on Sunday, earlier this year, when the High Court found its publication of her letter to her father – sent in August 2018 – was unlawful.
But ANL brought an appeal to overturn the ruling, which has been the subject of hearings at the Court of Appeal this week. The ruling is due at a later date.
This long ongoing court case is an attempt to protect the privacy of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex but in bringing the action it is, in some ways, doing the opposite.
The obvious anger and distress caused by the Mail on Sunday publishing extracts of a deeply personal letter has led to the release of a series of court documents which reveal arguments and disagreements from behind closed doors.
The fact that Harry and Meghan felt under pressure from the Royal Family to resolve the difficult relationship with her father, Thomas, has been discussed at length in court.
These text messages which mention what she feels was the “constant berating” of her husband over the issue of her father reveal something of the level of feeling in the days leading up to the letter being written.