In the years since the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made the decision to quit their royal duties and decamp to California, the couple has managed to enjoy a more peaceful life, largely out of the spotlight. On the face of it, they seemed finally free of the press intrusion they loathed for so long.
But, behind the scenes, Meghan has been fighting a legal battle against a somewhat unlikely claimant: her half-sister Samantha.
When news broke in October 2016 that Prince Harry had been secretly dating an American actress named Meghan Markle for four months, a stir of excitement rippled through the British public. It was a much-needed injection of life into the royal fold, and the prince was reportedly “besotted”. The buzz of a potential star-studded Hollywood royal wedding was palpable.
But one person wasn’t so keen to join in the celebrations. Just two days later, the Sun splashed an exclusive interview on its front page, with the glaring headline: Don’t fall for my little sis, Harry, she’d be the next PRINCESS PUSHY.
So began the much-publicised disagreement between Meghan and her half-sister, Samantha Markle.
Shortly after the interview, in which she labelled her younger sister “shallow” and a “social-climber”, Samantha was prolific in the news.
On Monday (March 11), a US court dismissed a defamation case the 59-year-old had brought against the Duchess of Sussex, relating to comments made in the latter’s bombshell interview with Oprah in 2021.
The main issue Samantha pursued in the $75,000 (£58,500) lawsuit concerned Meghan’s claim that her half-sister had changed her surname from Grant back to Markle when Meghan started dating Prince Harry. Samantha accused Meghan of making 14 defamatory statements in total, including “false and malicious” comments about her childhood, such as the claim that she was a “virtual stranger” to Meghan, and that Meghan grew up “as an only child”.
In her ruling, Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell found the comments were either opinions, substantially true, or did not plausibly defame Samantha. The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning she will not be able to refile.
Over the years, Samantha has publicly spoken ill of Meghan, and infamously staged paparazzi photos of their father, Thomas Markle, in the run up to Harry and Meghan’s 2018 wedding.
Her antics have led many, even the Duchess’s critics, to speak out against her — she was even dismissed by Piers Morgan as a “little vulture”.
But how did Meghan’s own sister become one of her biggest critics? Here’s everything you need to know about the life of Samantha Markle.
The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister: a tale of rival accounts of childhood
How close Samantha — a self-described “author, screenwriter, and counselor” – ever was with her half-sister is a subject of contention between the two. Although Samantha and Meghan share the same father, they have different mothers, and a 17-year age gap.
In television appearances and interviews, Samantha has spoken of herself as a member of Meghan’s extended family. In 2021, she published a tell-all memoir, The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister Part 1, in which she describes an idyllic Los Angeles childhood of babysitting, ice cream outings, and frequent telephone calls as Meghan grew older and began her acting career. Though in an interview with US Weekly in 2017, after Meghan and Harry announced their engagement, Samantha admitted it had “been a bit” since she had last spoken to her sister.
According to Meghan, it had been around 18 years. The duchess, who has denied a relationship with Samantha, claimed to only have seen her half-sister a handful of times growing up in her sit-down interview with Oprah in March 2021.
“I grew up as an only child, which everyone who grew up around me knows, and I wished I had siblings. I would have loved to have had siblings,” she said.
Much of what has been read about the Markles’ childhood comes from Samantha’s aforementioned memoir, released in January 2021, in which she describes Meghan as a “monster”, “cold-hearted”, and “controlling”. It’s a shocking account though, according to the blurb, her aim was to “share[s] the truth about her life and family against all odds and ultimatums”.
One anecdote recounts a story of Meghan, just before her first birthday, throwing blueberries around the kitchen as her father laughs in delight. “We didn’t laugh about cleaning up the mess, though,” Samantha adds.
She also writes about Meghan switching careers in early adulthood — from model to actress to radio news presenter. Plus Samantha shares how she even invested in hair extensions and tanning beds, inspired by her sister, but lamented how the extensions started to fall out and she was left with “several thinning areas”.
Bankruptcy, divorces and admitting to profiting from Meghan
Samantha, who has multiple sclerosis and now lives in London, has also been divorced twice and filed for personal bankruptcy in 2003. The father who once seemed to have favoured Meghan, is now apparently one of her few allies in the family.
Thomas (who has also suffered bankruptcy) and Samantha have both faced accusations of cashing in on Meghan’s fame. Previously going by Grant, Samantha allegedly changed her surname to Markle shortly after Meghan and Harry got engaged — a topic which formed part of the defamation lawsuit.
She has defended her earnings, telling Good Morning Britain, “Let’s face it, we all have to survive. Money makes the world go round, so if you want to call that cashing in, that’s fine.” And in an interview with The Mail on Sunday in July 2018, Thomas claimed that his daughter "[would] be nothing without me. I made her the duchess she is today”.
After the rumours of Meghan and Harry’s engagement ramped up, Samantha appeared to backtrack on the hostility towards her sister, insisting there was no rift between herself and Meghan and describing the Suits star as “absolutely lovely”, “very strong and very graceful”, and “very lively”.
During another appearance on Good Morning Britain, Samantha said: “I can see she’s just bubbling. It’s so charming and so warm. When I watch her with him, it’s very real and normal. We only get that once in a lifetime if we’re lucky. It’s not about royalty so much as it is about love and that’s wonderful for them.
“I just want to say I love you, I’m incredibly happy for you. Cheers and to a wonderful life.” [sic]
‘I am entirely the culprit’: the bizarre staged photos of Thomas Markle
In May 2018, Thomas Markle was photographed arriving at an internet café in Mexico, where he now lives, surfing the web for pictures of his daughter and Prince Harry, reading a book titled Images of Britain, and later getting a suit tailored. The snaps came after Kensington Palace issued a warning to publishers to respect Mr Markle’s privacy, saying he had been “harassed” by paparazzi.
Not long after, it transpired that the photos had been staged. Samantha admitted to convincing Thomas to hire a photographer to take the pictures. She said on Loose Women: “I have to say, I am entirely the culprit. I said, 'You have to show the world you're getting in shape.' It was my suggestion. I don't believe he was paid and if he was it was a pittance. I can understand it's awkward for Kensington Palace," she explained.
But when neither of Meghan’s half-siblings, Samantha or Thomas Jr, were invited to her and Harry’s 2018 wedding, Samantha slammed Meghan on social media and in the press.
When the big day arrived, Samantha invited a German TV crew to watch her reaction to the nuptials because, as she writes in her book, “I assumed that the world wanted to know how I felt about the wedding”.
Twitter accounts, accusations of cyberbullying and an alleged conspiracy theory about Meghan’s pregnancies
It was after Meghan and Harry’s wedding that Samantha’s obsession with her sister seemed to escalate.
In late 2018, media – citing police sources – reported that Samantha had been placed on a watch list maintained of people exhibiting signs of obsession with members of the royal family. She responded to the news by denying that she was obsessed with the Duchess of Sussex and tweeting that the purported listing was "a British media attempt at silencing me". In October of the same year, she was said to have turned up outside Buckingham Palace, without an appointment, and to have had a stand-off with police guards as she tried to gain access to her sister.
Soon after, in August 2019, her Twitter account was suspended, and it was reported that she was under investigation by the Polk County Sheriff's Department following multiple allegations of cyberbullying.
In early 2022, the feud took another turn. On March 15, Samantha’s Twitter account, @TheMarkleSammy, suddenly disappeared. A few days before, BuzzFeed News had found evidence that, for the past four years, Samantha has used various Twitter accounts not just to criticise Meghan, but to also propagate damaging and defamatory conspiracy theories about her half-sister. The claims included allegations against the Duchess circulating in anti-Sussex corners of the internet: that she faked her pregnancies and her two children might not be biologically hers.
Screenshots from the suspended account, bearing the profile name “Trump is America’s President”, show numerous now-deleted tweets peddling these unfounded claims, such as one reading, “I think it should be mandatory that proof of delivery from my sister’s womb [is given] if any of the children are to have a title and Archie should not have a title because I believe a surrogate was involved. I was told she picked up her eggs in Los Angeles”.
It later emerged her account was suspended by Twitter. Samantha's lawyer, Douglas Kahle, denied the allegations and claimed Samantha was hacked and that the tweets published by Buzzfeed were “photo-shopped”.
“Ms Markle's email and other accounts have been hacked on several occasions and it is very likely that those statements were made by third parties to defame our client,” Kahle told Buzzfeed.
Conspiracy theories were just the latest in a long line of pernicious online abuse Meghan had been subject to. The attacks against her became so virulent that in 2019, Buckingham Palace actually changed its policies surrounding social media comments to address them, and they are one of the reasons the Sussexes decided to leave the royal family in January 2020.
A “baseless and absurd” defamation lawsuit
Samantha first took legal action against her sister in March 2022, alleging the Duchess had defamed her by giving information to an unauthorised biography called Finding Freedom, written by Omid Scobie, and by discussing their relationship with Winfrey on live television.
At the time, Samantha was backed by her father. In 2022, Thomas took to his newly launched YouTube channel to announce he was ready to give evidence against Meghan “and her ginger husband” in court. The 79-year-old retired lighting director, who also vowed to petition a California court for the rights to see his grandchildren, Archie and Lilibet, said, “I’ve been trying for almost four years to get to see my daughter and her ginger husband in a courtroom face-to-face. I’d be thrilled to defend my oldest daughter.”
At the time, Meghan’s lawyer told TMZ, “This baseless and absurd lawsuit is just a continuation of a pattern of disturbing behaviour. We will give it the minimum attention necessary, which is all it deserves.”
The case was thrown out last year after Judge Honeywell found the Duchess could not be liable for the contents of the book because she had not published it.
Samantha then accused Meghan of fabricating a “rags to royalty” narrative when she described growing up in “virtual poverty” – for example, rather than working through college to pay for her education, as Meghan told Oprah, Samantha insisted that their father Thomas paid for her to attend "elite and expensive private schools”.
In March 2024, the case was once again dismissed. In a 58-page court ruling, US Judge Honeywell said Samantha, “failed to identify any statements that could support a claim for defamation or defamation-by-implication,” and that she merely “disagrees” with Meghan’s “opinions rather than statements of fact”.
The judge continued, "That plaintiff used one last name and then the name Markle soon after reports of [the] defendant's relationship with Prince Harry were published is substantially true, based on the exhibits in the record, of which the court has taken judicial notice, and the court cannot reasonably infer otherwise."
Throughout this long media campaign, Meghan has said little about Samantha. A rare insight into her feelings about her sister came when a 2018 email with her then-communications secretary Jason Knauf (made public as part of a privacy and copyright lawsuit the duchess filed against the publishers of the Mail on Sunday), revealed she described Samantha as having “began a career creating stories to sell to the press” when news of her relationship with Harry broke.
Whatever happens next, it seems, for the time being, that Meghan has come out on top.
