'Please stop victimizing me,

'Please stop victimizing me, Dad': Meghan sent her estranged father a letter after her wedding begging him to stop attacking her in the media - and he responded by asking for a photo shoot

• Meghan wrote the letter to her dad, Thomas Markle, shortly after her wedding to Prince Harry 
• 'I have one father. Please stop victimizing me through the media,' she wrote
• Friends say Thomas Markle responded by asking Meghan for a photo shoot
• 'I think she'll always feel genuinely devastated by what he has done,' friends said
• Those friends who spoke out said they are concerned about how the 'emotional trauma' of dealing with her father might be affecting Meghan's unborn baby
• The five anonymous friends  also rejected rumors she was feuding with her sister-in-law Kate Middleton
• 'There is nothing behind the feud with Kate,' they said. 'It's completely untrue'
• Meghan Markle was so upset by her estranged father's repeated attacks in the media that she wrote him a letter begging him to stop 'victimizing' her, say friends - who also voiced concern that the 'emotional trauma' of dealing with her dad could have a negative effect on the Duchess's baby.
  Five 'close friends' of the Duchess, who have not revealed their names as they don't want to jeopardize their relationship with her, told People that Meghan penned the letter to her father, Thomas Markle, shortly after her wedding to Prince Harry.
  'Dad, I'm so heartbroken. I love you. I have one father. Please stop victimizing me through the media so we can repair our relationship,' she is said to have written to Thomas after he gave a flurry of negative press interviews about her. 
  The five female friends, reported to be in Meghan's innermost circle, say Thomas then responded in a long letter of his own, in which he asked his daughter for a photo shoot. 
  'She feels like, 'That's the opposite of what I'm saying. I'm telling you I don't want to communicate through the media, and you're asking me to communicate through the media. Did you hear anything I said?'' they said. 
  

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  Meghan Markle (pictured with Prince Harry on February 1) was so upset by her estranged father's repeated attacks in the media that she begged him to stop 'victimizing' her, say friends
  'I think she will always feel genuinely devastated by what he has done,' they told the magazine. 
  The group of unnamed friends also voiced their concerns that the strain of her ongoing estrangement with her father, and the stress of dealing with his public rants about her, could well be taking its toll on Meghan and Prince Harry's unborn child.  
  'We worry about what this is doing to her and the baby,' they said. 'It's wrong to put anyone under this level of emotional trauma, let alone when they're pregnant.' 
  Since Meghan's wedding to Prince Harry in May 2018, which Thomas did not attend,  her estranged father has spoken out on several occasions about his daughter, addressing everything from his personal relationship with her - to the Duchess's alleged feud with Kate Middleton.   
  In December, he spoke exclusively with The Mail on Sunday about the 'wall of silence' that he said he has faced from Meghan, and Prince Harry, since their wedding, insisting that he had made 'dozens of attempts to reach his daughter via texts and letters' but that every effort to get in touch had been ignored. 
  At the time, he also insisted that he had been villainized by the public, and that the 'lies' spread about him had caused the rift with his daughter to become all the more serious. 
  Months earlier he spoke out to criticize his daughter for her ongoing refusal to speak with him, confessing that he was 'really hurt that she's cut me off completely', while hitting out at his daughter over her 'sense of superiority'. 
  However, Meghan's friends are now insisting that Thomas knows exactly how to reach his daughter, but say he has never actually tried to get in contact. 
  'He knows how to get in touch with her,' added one longtime friend, adding that Meghan's phone number had never changed, despite Thomas insisting previously that her contact information had been changed. 
  'He's never called; he's never texted. It's super painful because Meg was always so dutiful. And at the same time, because she's a daughter, she has a lot of sympathy for him.' 
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  Friends had concerns about what the stress of the negative press, often stirred up by Meghan's own estranged family, was doing to her and the baby. The pregnant Duchess is pictured with her husband Prince Harry last week
  Friends also rejected rumors of any feuding between Meghan and her sister-in-law Kate Middleton. These started when Meghan and Harry announced they were moving away from Kensington Palace in London to instead live in Frogmore Cottage in Windsor.  
  'She is the same person,' they said, 'though everything around her has changed.'
  'There is nothing behind the feud with Kate. It's completely untrue. '
  A friend and former costar from LA said that Meghan preferred a fairly simple life.
  She described visiting Meghan and Harry's cottage, where the former Suits star was more than happy to get her hands dirty.  
  'We had a couple of days together recently,' they told the magazine. 'Her husband was out of town on work. In the room she made up for me, there was a candle lit by the bed, slippers and a robe. We were the only two in the house. It was our time. 
  'She made the most lovely meals. She made tea every day. It was raining and muddy outside, so the dogs got all dirty, and she's wiping them off with towels. How much she loves her animals, how much she loves her friends, how much she loves feeding you, taking care of you — none of that has changed.' 
  They insist that the public portrayal of the 'difficult Duchess' could not be further from the down-to-earth, 'selfless' friend they know.
  'We've all been to their cottage,' another pal added, describing the couple's former home at Kensington Palace's Nottingham Cottage, a 'small' but 'cozy'.
  The friends insist that the caring Meghan seen chatting to the public on royal engagements really was the real deal.
  'When you see her at walkabouts, when she crouches down to talk to the kids and genuinely has real conversations with people, that's Meg.
  'That's how she crouches down with our kids at home. That's how she plays with them. That's how she engages with people and how she always has.'
  The confidante told People that Meghan stayed grounded through meditation, and even on the biggest day of her life, her wedding to Harry last May, she remained a sea of calm throughout. 
  'We could feel Meg's energy,' they said. 'The calm that she moves with. That's how it felt because that's how she and Harry are as a couple.'
  She was also the first friend they turned to for advice, and Meghan was always insistent that she hear about her friends' lives before talking about her own - and now they want to help her in the same way that she has done for them so many times.  
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  Fruity! Messages written on fruit by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex when she was helping to prepare food parcels to go in the charity outreach van, are pictured at One25 in Bristol, England, that said 'you are special, strong and brave' are seen
  'We want to stand up against the global bullying were seeing (against Meghan), ' the friends said. 'Meg has silently sat back and endured the lies and untruths. 
  It emerged last week that Kensington Palace staff are spending hours each week moderating online abuse aimed at Meghan, a former star of the show Suits, and the Duchess of Cambridge. 
  It's unclear who the friends are, but Meghan's former Ninaki Priddy has previously shared a plethora of childhood photos to various outlets, including DailyMail.com. 
  Thomas Markle gave yet another interview about his daughter in December - the fourth interview since the fall-out with Harry and Meghan after he staged paparazzi pictures shortly before the couple's wedding in May. 
  'I have been frozen out and I can't stay silent,' he said. 'I have made dozens of attempts to reach my daughter via text and letters, but she and Harry have put up a wall of silence. They have done what they once told me not to do – they are believing everything negative that has been written about me. So I am reaching out to them, once again, to try to correct the lies and get the truth out there.
  'Everyone says, why don't I just shut the f*** up? That Meghan can't speak to me because I'll give away secrets. But that's bull****. I've been accused of every terrible thing you can think of. In one magazine they had an awful story about Prince Charles right beside one about me. But no one is shunning Prince Charles.' 
  Meanwhile, Meghan appears to be enjoying her pregnancy during her royal engagement with Prince Harry. 
  An adorable video clip taken last week appears to show Meghan feeling Baby Sussex getting active in the womb during a tour of the Bristol Old Vic theater last Friday. 
  The Duchess is expecting her first child in April and is now well into the third trimester, when movements from babies in the womb become much stronger.
  As Meghan's due date draws closer, a longtime friend revealed that she had always wanted a big family.
  'Meg would come home with me at Thanksgiving and said "It's so fun to be around a big family gathering. I wish I had that."'
  The whistle-stop tour of the West Country city saw the parents-to-be also visit a sex worker charity where Meghan wrote messages of hope on bananas, which are distributed across the city to sex workers. 

  The history behind Meghan Markle's tumultuous relationship with her father

  Thomas Markle first met Meghan's mom, Doria Ragland, in the late 1970s.

  'My dad was a lighting director for a soap opera and my mom was a temp at the studio,' Meghan wrote in a personal essay for Elle in 2015, prior to dating Prince Harry.

  Meghan was born on August 4, 1981, and the couple moved to a home in the Los Angeles area. The couple later separated when Meghan was six years old, and she mainly lived with her mother.

  But Meghan still kept a close relationship with her father as she would often spend afternoons on set with him while he worked as a lighting director.

  'Every day after school for 10 years, I was on the set of Married ... with Children, which is a really funny and perverse place for a little girl in a Catholic school uniform to grow up,' she told Esquire in 2013. This closeness to Hollywood inspired the former Suits star to become an actress.

  Problems in their relationship appeared to start when Meghan was a teenager and went on to attend college at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. 

  Childhood friend Ninaki Priddy shared a candid video of Meghan when she was 18 years old. ‘From Dad's house, you can see the Hollywood sign. But we aren't going to go there because my dad and I aren't on the best of terms,’ Meghan said in the video.

  But in Meghan’s profile with Vanity Fair in 2017, she asserted her father was supportive of her career and proud when she landed a role on the legal drama Suits. 'My father knew how hard it is for an actor to get work, so he above all people was so proud that I was about to beat the odds,’ she said.

  Thomas retired to Rosarito Beach, Mexico, and was planning on attending Meghan’s wedding to Prince Harry on May 19 when the pictures scandal was revealed six days prior to the nuptials.

  It was revealed Thomas was paid money from a photographer to stage pictures of him trying on suits and researching the royals before the wedding.

  Meghan, still eager to have her father attend, was prepared to forgive the scandal. But then Thomas suffered a heart attack and had to undergo surgery on Wednesday ahead of the wedding. He decided not to attend.

  Issues continued for the father-daughter duo as he first appeared on Good Morning Britain on the Friday before the wedding to explain why he was not attending. 'I was excited about it and ready for it,' Thomas said at the time. 

  Prince Harry has yet to meet Thomas Markle as the wedding was supposed to be their first in-person encounter. But they reportedly spoke over the phone prior to the wedding. 

  Meghan and Harry were reportedly blindsided by the interviews Thomas continued to give to media, and his daughter allegedly begged him to stop talking to the press.

  But Thomas ignored her requests and publicly accused Meghan of changing her number and halting all ways for him to communicate with her. 

  In his fourth interview in December, Thomas said Meghan formed 'wall of silence'. 

  'I have been frozen out and I can't stay silent,' he said. 'I have made dozens of attempts to reach my daughter via text and letters, but she and Harry have put up a wall of silence.'