Meghan's statement on her father offers long-awaited answers, and a claim of vindication

For years, the question hung over Meghan like a stalled conversation: why did the Duchess of Sussex stop speaking to her father? Today she gave an answer, and in doing so, without quite using the word, she claimed vindication.

The statement lands on a relationship that had already thinned well before the world was watching. When her engagement to Prince Harry was announced in 2017, the once-close bond between Meghan and Thomas Markle had cooled. After his retirement in the US he moved to Mexico. Then, as he spoke freely to the media before and after the 2018 wedding, the relationship went into what the BBC's analysis calls a deep freeze. It is not clear when the two last saw each other.

The signs of difference came within weeks of the wedding announcement. Rather than accept the embrace of the Palace, and the media silence that comes with it, Thomas Markle gave comments, and sometimes commentary, to a range of outlets. He took part in what appeared to be a paid photoshoot while claiming he was being harassed by the press. He withdrew from the wedding just days beforehand, saying he was undergoing heart surgery. He said his daughter barely called him during that time; the duchess's people briefed that she had.

After that, her side went quiet. He did not. Markle became a regular on some broadcast outlets, often complaining that he had no contact with his daughter and son-in-law, had never met Harry, and later had never met his grandchildren. From Meghan came neither comment nor any guidance on why she had cut contact with the father she had once been so close to.

Into that silence rushed theory. One held that she was embarrassed by him. Another, that she and Harry felt he had compromised their privacy and would give him no more material to recycle. A third, that a man so close to the popular news outlets that tormented them no longer fit the life they wanted. These theories hardened into a case against her: that she would sacrifice anyone, even her father, to protect her position and spare herself embarrassment. As the BBC analysis puts it, that must have stung.

Her statement answers it directly. "I hope it can now be understood," she wrote, that despite certain media publications' distortion over the years, any distance from her father, and her choice not to let him have contact with her children, was for one reason: to protect them.

Meghan says she was informed of allegations about her father in 2018. The statement does not specify them in the material available here. It is understood that she learned of them after her May 2018 marriage to Harry. Since then, contact has been very limited. She wrote to him after he underwent surgery in the Philippines late last year. Thomas Markle has denied the allegations.

Whether any of this moves public opinion is hard to say. Many people made up their minds about Meghan long ago, and the saga with her father is only one strand of the tangled story between the duchess and the wider royal family. Her supporters, though, will read the allegations, and the response she says she made when she first heard them, as vindication. What happens next depends largely on whether Thomas Markle answers publicly, and whether the details of the allegations come into view.