Prince Harry's 'family Meghan never had' remark tied to Meghan Markle's long-running family feud, new look at past tensions

Prince Harry’s Christmas remark about the royals being the “family Meghan never had” sparked a public furor that has echoed through the royal narrative for years, becoming a touchstone in the broader saga of Meghan Markle’s relationship with her family and the Firm. The comment came during a December 27, 2017 appearance as a guest editor on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, just weeks after Harry had proposed to Meghan in November of that year. A month earlier, Meghan — then an American actress not yet a working royal — had been invited to join Harry at the annual Sandringham Christmas celebrations, an unprecedented move that underscored the unusual warmth surrounding the couple before their groundbreaking decision to step back from royal duties.

The remark immediately drew backlash from Meghan’s relatives and reframed public perception of how the couple’s integration into the Royal Family was viewed within her broader family circle. Samantha Grant, Meghan’s half-sister and the daughter of Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle, fired back on X, saying Meghan’s family was “always there with her and for her” and challenging the idea that there was a missing family bond. Grant, who later described the remark in interviews and media appearances, contended that the story Meghan’s family could tell was not the one Harry had referenced. Our household was very normal and when dad and Doria divorced, we all made it so it was like she had two houses. No one was estranged, she was just too busy. Grant also used social media to recount her version of events and to push back on Harry’s characterization of Meghan’s early royal experience.

The dispute extended beyond social media. In Channel 5’s Meghan and the Markles: A Family at War, Grant described the 2017 moments as a turning point, suggesting Harry’s comments conveyed a narrative that did not fully reflect Meghan’s upbringing or her ties to her family. She asserted that Meghan’s household was not fractured and that the sister’s own experiences of family life had always been complex but not irreparably broken. These remarks helped crystallize a broader narrative: that Meghan’s entry into the royal fold occurred amid competing stories about what family meant to her and how close she remained to relatives outside the palace walls.

The timeline around Meghan’s father illustrates the complexity of the Markle family dynamic. Before Meghan’s wedding in 2018, she had spoken warmly of her father in public forums, including a 2014 post on her now-defunct lifestyle blog, The Tig, in which she lauded him as a “thoughtful, inspiring, hardworking daddy” who had supported her dream long before it became a possible reality. The public-facing rift with Thomas Markle began after paparazzi photographs of him preparing for the wedding appeared, and he later withdrew from traveling to the ceremony due to health concerns. In a poignant moment of royal tradition, King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, offered to walk Meghan partway down the aisle when Meghan decided to walk alone, a gesture seen as a symbol of the Firm’s effort to embrace the new family member when the couple wed at Windsor’s St George’s Chapel.

Meghan and Harry’s relationship with the Royal Family would evolve in the years that followed. The couple’s decision to depart royal duties in 2020, a move widely dubbed “Megxit,” contrasted with Harry’s earlier portrayals of a warm, almost familial atmosphere at Sandringham. Meghan has spoken about her first Sandringham Christmas as “amazing” and described sitting with the late Prince Philip and the sense of family it conveyed in her Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan in 2022, highlighting that the experience remained bittersweet in light of the couple’s broader estrangement from parts of the family. The documentary and subsequent interviews provided a counterpoint to the earlier radio remarks, depicting a more nuanced and sometimes contradictory narrative about the couple’s early royal life.

In recent years, reporting about Meghan’s relationship with her father has remained a topic of public interest. After a period of limited contact, Meghan is said to have sent a hand-delivered letter to her father when she felt she could not reach him by email or phone, a gesture that suggested an attempt at reconciliation but was not followed by a reply, according to reports. The note reflected the broader tension between Meghan’s desire to protect her privacy and the public’s enduring curiosity about how the Markle family story will unfold. Her father Thomas Markle has expressed lingering openness to reconciliation in exclusive interviews from hospital settings in the Philippines, where he faced serious health challenges including a leg amputation. He asserted that he would love to speak with his daughter and meet his grandchildren, though he acknowledged that the distance created by media attention and ongoing family tensions would complicate such a reconciliation.

Eight years after Harry’s controversial comment first aired, Meghan’s relationship with her father and with parts of her extended family remains a defining, if contested, element of her public narrative. The Sussexes’ decision to live in Montecito, away from the British press and the palace spotlight, has not severed the ongoing public dialogue about how the Royal Family and Meghan’s own relatives have shaped one another’s lives. Meghan, now 44, has described those Sandringham Christmas memories as both meaningful and complicated by later events, including the couple’s departure from royal duties and their struggles to balance private life with public scrutiny.

The episode underscores a broader pattern in celebrity culture: moments on air can crystallize long-breeding tensions within families, especially when those families intersect with highly scrutinized institutions. For Culture & Entertainment audiences, the Christmas comment stands as a notable pivot point in the Markle-Harry narrative — a moment that illuminated the complexities of belonging, kinship, and the limits of reconciliation within a highly public royal context. As the family saga continues to unfold in interviews, documentaries, and royal appearances, observers will likely revisit the 2017 remark as an early signal of the enduring, multi-layered dispute that has colored the modern chapter of Meghan Markle’s life in the public eye.