As King Charles, Queen Camilla and the rest of the royals prepare for their annual Christmas knees up at Sandringham, there will be two glaring absentees from the table once again this year. It’s been reported that no invitation has been extended to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who instead will likely be spending Christmas with their children at home in Montecito, as they have done for the last few years. But with Meghan’s estranged father currently in hospital following life-saving surgery and Harry still not on speaking terms with much of his immediate family, there’s likely to be more than a tinge of sadness to the Sussexes’ festivities this year.
The last week has been dominated by headlines about Thomas Markle, Meghan’s 81-year-old father, who was admitted to hospital in the Philippines for emergency surgery to amputate his leg last Wednesday. Since then, he has begged his daughter to see him “one more time before I die” and told reporters she has not called him following his life-saving operation. For her part, the duchess claimed to have sent an email to the address she held for her father after either having lost or deleted his phone number following several years of estrangement. When it was revealed he had stopped using this address, sources close to her said she had personally rung round multiple hospitals on the island of Cebu, where her father is currently based, to try to track him down, but with no success.
