It’s widely known that Meghan Markle’s relationship with the Royal Family is strained, but there was a time when she was warmly embraced by them.

In December 2017, just a month after Prince Harry proposed, Meghan was invited to the traditional Christmas celebrations at Sandringham—a rare honor since she wasn’t yet a working royal.

However, shortly after, Meghan’s family was taken aback by a comment Prince Harry made during an interview about their first Christmas together in Norfolk.

While guest-editing an episode of BBC Radio 4’s Today program on December 27, Harry, now 41, referred to the royals as the “family Meghan never had” during a conversation with presenter Sarah Montague.

“She’s done an absolutely amazing job. She’s getting in there, and it’s the family I suppose that she never had,” he remarked.

Harry also mentioned how much his family “loved having” Meghan there, describing the celebrations as “fantastic.”

Taken to imply that the Firm had somehow filled a family-shaped hole in Meghan’s life, Harry’s comment received particular public backlash from Meghan’s half-sister, Samantha Grant, now 61.

Taking to social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to hit back at the prince’s words – Ms Grant, the daughter of Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle, insisted that Meghan’s family were ‘always there with her and for her’.

Just days after Meghan Markle spent her first Christmas with the Royal Family in 2017, her family were left publicly reeling after Harry (pictured) described the royals as the ‘family Meghan never had’

Taking to social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to hit back at the prince’s words – Samantha Grant (left), Meghan’s half-sister, said Meghan’s family were ‘always there with her and for her’

A month after Prince Harry had popped the question, Meghan was invited to join her new fiancé at the annual Christmas Sandringham celebrations – an unprecedented move given she was, at that stage, not a working royal

 ‘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’. 

She also went on to praise her ‘completely self-sacrificing father’, adding: ‘She always had this family, Marrying merely extends it.’

Meghan’s parents – Doria Ragland and Thomas – divorced when the actress was just six years old. She has two half-siblings, Samantha and Thomas Markle Jr, from her father’s first marriage. 

In a scathing interview in March 2019, Ms Grant revealed that it was Harry’s comments about that Sandringham Christmas that prompted the bitter feud with her sister, adding that she believed Harry had not been ‘given the full story’.

During the Channel 5 documentary Meghan and the Markles: A Family at War, she accused Meghan of having ‘no heart’ and added: ‘Something was not right. Though we weren’t the classic family together on schedule for every holiday, we were family.’

‘It was starting to feel like she wasn’t reaching out to the family,’ Ms Grant said.

Eight years since Harry’s controversial comment was publicly broadcast, Meghan’s fractured family relationships are now well documented. 

Just last week, the Duchess, now 44, was reported to have ‘no plans’ to visit her 81-year-old father in hospital after he underwent a life-saving leg amputation in the Philippines.

Last week, Meghan, now 44, was reported to have ‘no plans’ to visit her 81-year-old father Thomas (right) in hospital after he underwent a life-saving leg amputation in the Philippines

Meghan’s parents – Doria Ragland (right) and Thomas – divorced when the actress was just six years old. She has two half-siblings, Samantha and Thomas Markle Jr, from her father’s first marriage

 After failing to get hold of him by email or phone, the Duchess – who has not seen him since her 2018 royal wedding – ‘reached out’ to her father in the form of a hand-delivered letter. 

However she is thought to believe his relationship with the media – understood to be something she addresses in her letter – means they are unlikely ever to reconcile.

She has so far not had a reply to her letter, the Sunday Times reported.

However, before she wed Prince Harry, Meghan once shared an incredibly close bond with her father. In a blog post on her now-defunct lifestyle blog The Tig in 2014, she paid tribute to her ‘thoughtful, inspiring, hardworking daddy’.

In the gushing Father’s Day tribute, the actress described Mr Markle as ‘the person who believed in this grand dream of mine well before I could even see it as a possibility’.

She went on to fondly praise him for the ‘blood, sweat and tears this man (who came from so little in a small town of Pennsylvania where Christmas stockings were filled with oranges, and dinners were potatoes and spam) invested in my future so that I could grow up to have so much’.

Since then, their relationship has deteriorated, with the pair’s rift first beginning when Mr Markle worked with a paparazzi photographer near his home in Mexico to stage photographs of him being fitted for a suit ahead of the Sussexes wedding.

Shortly afterwards, he suffered two heart attacks and was forced to pull out of travelling to the UK for the couple’s royal wedding ceremony at Windsor’s St George’s Chapel in May 2018.

Before she wed Prince Harry, Meghan once shared an incredibly close bond with her father (pictured). In a blog post on her now-defunct lifestyle blog The Tig in 2014, she paid tribute to her ‘thoughtful, inspiring, hardworking daddy’

Meghan and her father’s rift first began ahead of her royal wedding in 2018. Thomas did not walk his daughter down the aisle. Instead, King Charles (pictured), then Prince of Wales, offered to walk her partway

Instead, King Charles, then Prince of Wales, offered to walk her partway down the aisle when he learnt of the Duchess’s plans to walk alone.

According to royal author Robert Hardman, Meghan was said to have asked her new father-in-law if the pair could ‘meet halfway’, with the gesture seen as a poignant sign of the Firm fondly embracing their new member. 

Mr Markle has never met the Sussexes’ two children – Prince Archie, six, and four-year-old Princess Lilibet.

But in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail from his hospital bed in the Philippines, Mr Markle said that while he has not heard from his daughter since his illness he would ‘love to speak to her’. 

‘I’ve always said I am open to reconciling with my daughter,’ he added.

‘I have never stopped loving her. I don’t want to die estranged from Meghan.

‘I want to meet my grandkids. It might be nice to meet her husband too.’

Meghan’s relationship with the Royal Family has also become estranged following the momentous fallout of her and Harry’s decision to step back from their duties and relocate to America in early 2020.

Their controversial decision, later dubbed ‘Megxit’, was a far cry from the close family unit Harry had fondly detailed in his Radio 4 interview.

In her 2022 Netflix Documentary Harry & Meghan, the Duchess described her first experience at the royal Norfolk estate in 2017 (pictured) as ‘amazing’, adding that it was ‘just like a big family like I always wanted’

 However, while the Sussexes have often relayed negative accounts of their short-lived time in the Firm, Meghan herself has spoken rather fondly about her first Sandringham Christmas.

In her 2022 Netflix Documentary Harry & Meghan, the Duchess described her first experience at the royal Norfolk estate as ‘amazing’, adding that it was ‘just like a big family like I always wanted’. 

‘I remember so vividly the first Christmas at Sandringham,’ Meghan recalled. ‘Calling my mum, and she’s like, “How’s it going?” And I said, “Oh my gosh, it’s amazing,”‘ she said.

She also reminisced on being seated next to the late Prince Philip, ‘H’s grandfather’, at the Christmas Eve banquet, describing their animated conversation as ‘wonderful’.

During the late Queen Elizabeth II’s annual Christmas broadcast addressed to the nation that year, Her Majesty made her fond feelings for Meghan clear.

The monarch referred to welcoming ‘new members’ into the family as they entered into the New Year, while a framed photograph of Harry and Meghan was also displayed in the background as she spoke. 

Sadly, while Harry and a then-pregnant Meghan went on to attend the Sandringham festivities in 2018, they have not partaken in the esteemed royal tradition since.

This Christmas will mark the sixth year the Duke has spent away from his family. While the royals will gather in Norfolk, the Sussexes are instead opting to spend the holiday season more than 5,000 miles away in their $14million Montecito mansion.