In a thought-provoking piece yesterday, my colleague Richard Kay posed the question many have been asking in recent days: Could the scandal over sexual abuse allegations against Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle Sr, generate a groundswell of support for the duchess?

He pointed out that Meghan’s decision to address the claims about her father directly has seen her, in some quarters, favourably dubbed a ‘tiger mum’, hell-bent on protecting her children Archie and Lilibet from her father after learning of the horrendous accusations against him.

Richard asked whether the revelations about Mr Markle Sr might lead to Charles and Camilla – and, yes, even William and Kate – reaching out to the Sussexes in Meghan’s hour of need.

I was interested to see what you readers thought about this. And it soon became clear upon reading your comments on the Daily Mail’s coverage of the story that there is still little forgiveness for what the overwhelming majority believe is Meghan’s betrayal of the Royal Family in her 2021 Oprah interview, accusing the royals of being racist and Harry’s assaults on William and Kate in his 2023 memoir Spare.

So, my advice to the Prince and Princess of Wales – and the entire Royal Family – is this: Steer well clear of this sordid story about Mr Markle Sr – described by a Filipino minister as ‘a possible sex offender of the grossest kind’.

I wrote in my column on Saturday, after the news first emerged that Mr Markle Sr was being investigated by police in the Philippines over ‘hundreds of child sex abuse images’ found by his son, Thomas Jr, at his father’s home in the city of Cebu, that I felt sorry for Meghan. I mean, who wouldn’t be horrified to discover such hideous allegations against their beloved dad?

But revelations in recent days have given me pause for thought.

On Friday, Meghan claimed to be shocked and ‘deeply distressed’ by the claims about her estranged father, implying she was first made aware of ‘disturbing allegations’ about him in 2018 via a letter shared with her by the Metropolitan Police.

The Met claimed at the weekend, however, that it received a letter relating to Mr Markle Sr in January 2019. We now know that this letter was sent by Roslyn Loveless, Mr Markle Sr’s first wife, who died in 2024, accusing her ex-husband of being a serial abuser of children. Mr Markle Sr vehemently denies the allegations.

So how then does it stack up that, in her hit Netflix series in 2022, she gushed about her father and all he had done helping her in her fledgling acting career, claiming, ‘I’ve been a Daddy’s Girl my whole life.’

Or that her husband Harry wrote in his memoir – four years after Meghan saw Loveless’s letter – that his father-in-law was ‘complicated’ but said that Meghan ‘still, even in her 30s, called him Daddy. She loved him, worried about him – his health, his habits – and often relied upon him.’

Meghan only appears to have categorically cut her dad out of her life late last year, when Mr Markle Sr was gravely ill in hospital in the Philippines having had one leg amputated below the knee.

At which point a sealed letter from Meghan was bizarrely hand-delivered to her father’s hospital bed, as exclusively revealed in The Mail on Sunday and witnessed by my colleague Caroline Graham. It is believed that in the letter, Meghan said she knew he had abused young girls and that she would never allow him to meet his grandkids.

Now, I’ve never been in such a situation, but how could Meghan, knowing of the allegations against her father, tell the world via Netflix, that she was a ‘Daddy’s Girl’?

Had she scrubbed her memory of the 2019 letter and its accusations because they were just too appalling to believe?

Could it be that admitting receiving that letter would have meant revealing to the world what a deeply dysfunctional family she comes from? Her father’s ex-wife, who raised her half-sister Samantha and half-brother Thomas Jr, was an alcoholic. Thomas Jr had his own issues with drink. The year before Meghan’s wedding, he pulled a gun on his fiancee, Darlene, during a drunken argument.

As I say, it’s a tawdry tale that the Royal Family would do best to stay out of. Which is why I believe the only good news to come of it is that the Royal Family told the Daily Mail officially yesterday: ‘This is a matter for the Sussex household.’

For which read: Harry and Megs can deal with their own miserable, dysfunctional family mess on their own.

RICHARD KAY: What insiders told me about whether Royals will reach out to Meghan and Harry. It's an opportunity to reconcile but there are risks – and the Palace is scrambling