Meghan Markle's father, Thomas Markle, had planned to stay with a controversial aristocrat who runs a royal YouTube channel during his planned trip to Britain at the time of Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee.
Lady Colin Campbell, a Jamaican-born British aristocrat and author turned reality television star, known for voicing her controversial opinions on members of the royal family, announced to her 144,000 YouTube subscribers on Thursday that Meghan's father was to stay at her castle home during his stay in Britain had it not been canceled owing to his ill health.
It was announced on May 24 that Markle had experienced a stroke and had been hospitalized as a result, making his international trip impossible. Meghan's half-sister Samantha, who is suing Meghan for libel, told GB News that: "My father is recovering in hospital. We ask for privacy for the family, for his health and wellbeing."
"He just needs peace and rest," she continued. "Godspeed. We are praying. He just needs some rest. It's a travesty how much he's been tortured and how much he's had to go through thanks to my sister's disregard the past few years. That is unforgivable."
On Wednesday she provided an update, saying: "He's doing better, he's in good spirits," but that: "it's going to take several, maybe six months, maybe a year to get his speech back...The stroke was in the right side of the brain so the damage was on the left and he's left-handed but it also impaired his speech and his ability to swallow."
Meghan and her father have been estranged since 2018 when shortly before the royal wedding he was exposed as having collaborated with a member of the paparazzi to stage a series of photographs of him trying on wedding suits and researching Prince Harry online.
Markle has not met his two royal grandchildren, Archie, 3, and Lilibet, 11 months.
Campbell told viewers of her YouTube channel that Markle's intended stay had been organized in collaboration with GB News host Dan Wootton who it was intended would conduct an interview with the 77-year-old during his visit.
"Dan Wootton and I, and Dan's people and I," she said, "have been in touch with each other for some time now."
She continued that the planned arrangement was "essentially a private visit, however, it has been derailed by Mr. Markle's unfortunate illness."
Campbell has had a long career as a royal commentator being among the first to publish a biography of Princess Diana in the 1990s that implied that the Wales' marriage was not a happy one.
Since then she has launched her YouTube channel and become an outspoken critic of Meghan and Prince Harry, organizing a change.org online petition earlier this year advocating for the couple to be stripped of their royal titles. So far this petition has reached over 86,000 signatures.
In her most recent YouTube video, Campbell compares Meghan to the daughters of William Shakespeare's King Lear who she likens to the royal's father.
"So far as I am concerned, Thomas Markle is the living embodiment of King Lear," she said, "and his thankless daughter Meghan is the combination of Lear's two thankless daughters Goneril and Regan."
In King Lear, Goneril and Regan betray their father out of greed before turning on one another.
Meghan is due to make her first public return to Britain next month since stepping down as a full-time working royal in March 2020, for a visit marking Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
She has returned to Britain only once since moving to America and only in a private capacity to visit the queen ahead of her 96th birthday with Harry. Meghan has not made a public appearance in the U.K. since the broadcast of her 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey and her popularity in the U.K is low with a net approval rating of -21.
A spokesperson for Harry and Meghan confirmed to Newsweek in May that:
"Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are excited and honored to attend The Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations this June with their children."
It is not known which jubilee events the couple will be attending but they are expected to appear alongside other members of the royal family at a special service of thanksgiving for the queen's 70-year reign on Friday, June 3.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more
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