One of the most surprising revelations from the explosive new Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Netflix documentary – other than the not-so thinly veiled barbs at the Royal family and Harry’s sad admission that he feels responsible for Meghan losing touch with her dad – was the close relationship that Meghan has with her niece, Ashleigh.
The biological daughter of Meghan’s half-sister Samantha Markle (more on that later), Ashley was a surprise addition to the series, after we’d seen the likes of lawyer Jenny Afia and software technician Christopher Bouzy, as well as friends of the couple, appear in the trailers.
And it seems it's all the internet wants to talk about, with google searches for Ashleigh, 'Meghan Markle Niece' and what happened at the couple's wedding all breakout search terms.
But the closeness of Meghan’s relationship with Ashleigh – particularly considering the controversy around the paternal side of her family (again, more on that later) – surprised viewers, with one writing on Twitter, ‘Wow… Meghan is close with her niece. That explains Samantha Markle’s bitterness. #HarryandMeghanNetflix’.’
Another said, ‘Best plot twist so far was Ashleigh Hale, Meghan’s niece and Samantha Markle’s daughter, to speak up. But very said that Jason Knauf advised them to not invite her to the royal wedding bc of her mom #HarryandMeghanNetflix’.
Who is Ashleigh Hale, Meghan’s niece?
Ashleigh is the daughter of Meghan’s estranged sister Samantha Markle, her father Tom’s daughter from a previous marriage who’s often popped up in the media over the past few years giving interviews about Meghan’s early life, despite the fact that Meghan claims they hadn’t had a relationship in two decades.
As a young child, Ashleigh and her sister were adopted by their paternal grandparents. Later, when Tom passed on the news to Meghan that Samantha had reconnected with her children, Meghan was interested in having a relationship with them too. From there, regular correspondence turned into holidays and spending time together in real life, and in the documentary, Meghan describes Ashleigh as ‘like a sister’.
Did Ashleigh Hale attend Meghan and Harry’s wedding?
Yet another casualty of the royal media machine, in the documentary Meghan explains that, after her dad’s publicity stunt staging photographs for the British tabloid press just days before the nuptials, it was advised that Ashleigh not attend in the wedding in the hopes of minimising bad press.
Speaking of the ‘huge undertaking the very, very small comms team’ had to manage, Meghan posited, ‘How do we explain [to the media and public] that this half-sister isn’t invited to the wedding, but that the half-sister’s daughter is?
‘And so with Ashleigh, the guidance at the time was to have her not come to our wedding. And that’s painful.’
‘Communication with Meg became less and less frequent. My impression was that her relationships were being managed on some level,’ says Ashleigh. ‘I think I said I was hurt on some level, but that I understood where it was coming from.
‘To know that it was because of my biological mother, this relationship that was so important to me was impacted in that way… to feel like, because of her it was taken away, that’s been hard.’