Meghan Markle's older brother delivers a blunt message to Prince Harry today: Get on and propose to my sister because she is a "hot commodity".
Speaking in an exclusive interview with DailyMailTV, Thomas Markle Jr, 51, told of his pride in his younger sister and said the 36-year-old actress has always been destined for big things.
Markle Jr, of Grants Pass, Oregon, said: "I hope Prince Harry proposes. She's a hot commodity right now - he better get on it.
"I do have a sense of pride in Meghan being successful. It was just obvious from day one that she was destined to be somewhere really big.
"She's always been a princess. She's carried herself on that level from day one."
The call comes ahead of the first ever public appearance by the couple, who will be at Prince Harry's Invictus Games in Toronto later this month.
The prince, who left the army after serving as an Apache pilot in Afghanistan, has made the games for wounded and injured service personnel his personal project and they are being held in Toronto which Markle has made her home town while filming Suits. She is expected to be at his side during his week in the Canadian city.
Markle confirmed the romance this month in a Vanity Fair interview this month saying: "We're a couple. We're in love.
"I'm sure there will be a time when we will have to come forward and present ourselves and have stories to tell, but I hope what people will understand is that this is our time."
The actress has been welcomed by Harry's immediate family, including his brother Prince Williams and sister-in-law the Duchess of Cambridge. There have even been unconfirmed reports she may have met the Queen.
Now the welcome is being extended to him from Meghan Markle's own family - which her brother compared to "the Dukes of Hazzard and the Simpsons".
Markle Jr is the only son of Meghan's father, Emmy-award winning television lighting director Thomas Markle Sr, 73, and his first wife Roslyn, 72.
The couple, who were both living in Chicago, Illinois, when they met and married, also had a daughter, Yvonne, but split when their son was 10 in 1976.
Yvonne, who has since changed her name to Samantha, now lives in Silver Springs, Florida, with her boyfriend Mark Phillips, 59, and is estranged from the rest of the family.
After the divorce, Roslyn moved with her two children to Albuquerque, New Mexico, while Thomas Sr relocated to Los Angeles, California, to pursue a career in TV and film.Â
Roslyn also had another child, with son Bobby Lucero now 35.
And it was in Los Angeles, while working on the set of medical drama General Hospital, that he met make-up artist turned yoga teacher Doria Ragland, now 61, who would go on to become his second wife.
In August 1981, the pair welcomed their only child - Rachel Meghan Markle, now a potential member of the royal family thanks to her 18-month romance with Prince Harry, 33. She does not use her first name.
Along with Samantha and Markle Jr, Meghan's extended family includes retired teacher Ava Burrows; Doria's 64-year-old stepmother, who now lives in Indio, California, and her son Joffrey Ragland, 34 - the actress' half-uncle.
And on the Markle side of the family there was grandmother Doris, who died in 2011 aged 91, and the Suits star's uncle Frederick, 75, of Sanford, Florida, who goes by the name of Bishop Dismas and runs a small tumbledown church.
Other members of the clan include Samantha's youngest daughter, Noel Rasmussen, 18 - from whom she is also estranged - and Markle Jr's two sons: Tyler and Thomas Dooley.
Describing the large family, Markle Jr said: "I would describe my extended family as a cross between Married With Children and Dexter probably.
"Let's see, probably the Dukes of Hazzard and the Simpsons vs. the royal family."
Markle Jr. remains close to his parents and has nothing but good things to say about Meghan, but he and Samantha have long been estranged - with the family split over her plans to write a tell-all book called The Diary of Princess Pushy's Sister.
According to Samantha, the book will include her memories of the Suits actress and will "deal with my bi-racial family in a candid, warm, personal and socially important way".
But Markle Jr and slammed Grant, 52, for badmouthing Meghan and the rest of the clan.
He said: "She's going to find a way to bring the spotlight into her lap whether she has to talk bad about the entire family or Meghan or whoever.
"She's been this way - very negative against the whole entire family - since everybody can remember."
He tells DailyMailTV the tome is just another attempt to steal the spotlight and disparage the 36-year-old.
He said: "She's battered this whole Meghan thing since day one and she's obviously doing this for her little flash in the pan fame and fortune.
"Telling the whole world about her pushy princess sister, which is just horrible [and] not even true."
Should the 36-year-old become a real princess, her in-laws would include the Queen, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall.
Had she survived the Paris car crash that killed her at the age of 36 in August 1997, the actress' mother-in-law would have been Princess Diana; like Meghan, one of the most photographed women in the world at the time of her death.
More colorful members of the extended Royal family include the Duchess of Cambridge's uncle, Gary Goldsmith; a louche businessman who was once caught on camera snorting cocaine and boasting of his connections at his villa, the 'Maison de Bang Bang' on Spanish party island Ibiza, in 2009.
Following Pippa Middleton's marriage in May to stockbroker James Matthews, the extended family now also includes reality television playboy Spencer Matthews, 28, who stars in Made In Chelsea and once claimed to have bedded more than 1,000 women.
Meghan's own family has no shortage of quirky characters, not least Markle Jr himself, who in January, was arrested and charged with drunkenly holding a gun to the head of girlfriend Darlene Blount, 37.
A mugshot taken shortly after the arrest shows the 51-year-old looking red-faced and rumpled and he later told DailyMail.com that it is the worst picture of him ever taken.
But, Markle Jr, who had the charges against him thrown out in February, is now engaged to soft-spoken Blount, having proposed to her on her birthday.
This article was first published on dailymail.co.uk and is reproduced here with permission.
