Meghan Markle has had a tumultuous, and unfortunately very public, relationship with her father since her 2017 engagement. With the recent news of Thomas Markle’s amputation and subsequent correspondence with his daughter, royal expert Emily Andrews shares her thoughts on the “deeply sad saga” of Meghan and Thomas Markle. Writing for Woman and Home, Andrews shares the “key reason as to why she won’t see him again.”

“Meghan and her dad used to be very close,” Andrews wrote. “But after he posed for some rather innocuous staged paparazzo shots at his home in Mexico, and then lied about it to Harry and Meghan, the relationship completely deteriorated.” Those photographs were sold around their 2018 wedding, with snaps of Thomas Markle reading books of British royalty and other staged situations. Immediately before Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding, Mr. Markle suffered from two heart attacks and could no longer make the journey. “I remember breaking the news to Harry’s Communications Secretary that he wasn’t coming. He had no idea,” Andrews revealed.

Rather than hearing the news from her father, Meghan Markle reportedly heard it through the media grapevine. “Meghan then apparently deleted Tom’s phone number and the two hadn’t spoken since,” reported Andrews. The most recent letter sent to his hospital bed was their only communication since 2018. “The duchess let it be known that it was her dad’s alleged ‘collusion with the media’ that has been ‘a major factor in the breakdown of their relationship’,” Emily Andrews said.

From Emily Andrews’ point of view, things could have ended up completely differently for the Duchess of Sussex and her family. “A courtier told me if Meghan and Harry had brought over her Markle family a couple of weeks before the wedding, put them up in a nice hotel and had them looked after by palace staff, none of this would ever have happened,” she reported.

“Instead, poor Tom Markle (who paid to put her through private school and university) is learning how to walk with a prosthetic limb, knowing he will likely never see his daughter again,” Andrews emotively claimed in her column. “No one emerges the victor here. Least of all Meghan.”