Hi RTA! I have a question on a very old topic. It's water under the bridge, but it's struck me as very odd due to the narrative shifts:
Up until recently (afaik), the narrative around the Sussex wedding was that, at some point, Thomas Markle thought he was attending. He staged some pap shots re a suit fitting, to improve his image (which pissed H+M off) but he never actually received an invite (apparently, Doria received a beautiful scroll or some such). At some point, Meghan told Thomas Markle to ghost his other children, if he wanted to come to her wedding. He refused. Anyway, he had a heart attack due to the pressure, so wasn't fit to fly.
Subsequently, Meghan (via Netflix?) has told some stories about sending help to his house (whilst he was in hospital!) - but the claims can't be proven - and booking him flights that didn't exist (the named airline made jokes on twitter about the non-existant route).
The long-held theory was that Meghan had set Thomas Markle up, over the pap shots (she'd previously worked with the photographer who appoached Samantha), as an excuse for her to not let him attend the wedding. Lady C has sworn up and down that Thomas Markle didn't receive an invite, obviously because she has spoken to him. IIRC, both Samantha and Thomas have said this, on camera, as well.
Fast forward to today and we have Lady Elizabeth Anson (HMQ ERII's cousin, once removed), via Sally Bedell Smith, stating that plans had been made for Thomas Markle to enter St. George's Chapel via a side door because he "didn't do steps". This sounds wholly plausible, because you'd always try to accomodate the parents of a bride, as a priority.
Now, it appears that Richard Kay states that Thomas Markle DECLINED an invitation to the wedding:
"She was also uncomfortable with Charles’s decision to stand in for Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle, and walk her down the aisle after the retired television cameraman declined an invitation to his daughter’s wedding due to health issues"
(link to paywalled article: https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14876499/When-Queen-heard-Harry-phone-stony-silence-Peerless-Royal-expert-RICHARD-KAY-sensationally-tells-time-exactly-Prince-Meghan-blew-relationship-grandmother.html)
What the hell is going on? Was Thomas Markle invited or not? Is this a deliberate - or careless - changing of the narrative? Is this semantics over whether Mr. Markle received an official invite, or not (which of course, he should have done). Were the Harkles running intereference during the wedding prep, so they were responding for Mr. Markle, thus keeping him out of the loop?
I know that this isn't that important, but it seems such a large shift in the narrative, after so long, that it caught my attention. Do you have any thoughts on this?
So there are three things that I keep thinking about whenever I read this ask.
That's Tom Markle's name printed in the official order of service/program.
The average bridal timeline suggests ordering and printing your programs about 1-2 months before the wedding to ensure they're delivered on time. Obviously there are different metrics for the BRF since they probably have their own in-house printer/publisher, so let's split the difference and say they had their program ordered and printed 2 weeks before the wedding on a VIP rush job.
The huge fuss all the Markles made about Meghan in the run-up to the wedding (and for some time afterwards). Is Richard Kay seriously telling us that despite all that fuss, despite all of Tom's moaning about his little flower, despite Samantha's pitiful "woe is me" paproll at Kensington Palace, despite Tom publicly whining how wonderfully Doria was being treated and hosted by the BRF while he gets nothing -- Tom just said "nah, never mind"?
So your guess that the Harkles were meddling, telling the BRF one thing while telling Tom the other, is probably what was going on. And I'd agree with that.
Meaning that Meghan and Harry weren't just misleading Tom that he was being invited - they were also misleading palace officials and the BRF that Tom was being invited.
Because if Tom actually had declined the invite, then why the hell would the BRF list him in the official order of service? If Tom actually had declined the invite, then why would the palace go so far as to devise alternate arrangements for getting him to the wedding?
The wedding invitation. Here, let me blow it up for y'all.
It says "A reply is requested to Assistant Comptroller, Lord Chamberlain's Office" at "Buckingham Palace." That last line there is an email address.
Not Meghan. Not Harry. Not Kensington Palace.
And certainly Meghan would not have had access to the Lord Chamberlain's email address to be able to manipulate responses.
Meaning if Tom had been issued an official invitation to the wedding, his "no" would've gone directly to the Lord Chamberlain's Office and the BRF would have planned accordingly - as in, not developed this "avoid the TV cameras and use the side entrance" Plan B. Not to Meghan, which ultimately meant Meghan had no control over who accepted or declined a wedding invite unless that person wasn't sent one in the first place.
So again, the likely story here isn't that Tom was misleading all of us in his PR, but that Meghan and Harry were misleading absolutely everyone. They were telling Tom one thing, telling palace officials another thing, telling The Queen and family members an entirely other thing, and telling the public a completely different fourth thing.
Two "sides" have been absolutely consistent this whole time: Tom Markle and the BRF. Only one side has been utterly inconsistent and caught in their own lies this whole time: Harry and Meghan.
For me, there's also the Richard Kay of it. Which is that Richard Kay was very close to Diana, he continues to write "exclusives" about Diana, such as this one, from earlier this year (March 2026):
So I think Richard Kay is very much sympathetic to Harry and Meghan, such that I do plausibly think he attempted to reset the wedding narrative to be in the Sussexes' favor.
But why, though? Why rehash this particular narrative now? (Well, then, since this is almost a year later.) Exactly as you say, Void - it's old water under a long-gone bridge.
It's definitely clapback to the Lady Anson reveal, and I think it shows a) how petty Harry and Meghan are that they're still holding a grudge against this thing that happened 8 years ago and b) Harry and Meghan absolutely do read all of their press.
But anyway, yeah, all of this sounds like the Harkles were trying to play chess and outmaneuver the BRF by controlling the wedding's PR as part of their "modernizing the monarchy" effort but it turns out they were playing tetherball with each other instead.