At 800 words, Brooklyn’s statement is the Instagram equivalent of War and Peace, but the topline is this: he has confirmed he is estranged from his parents, and does not wish to reconcile. As widely speculated, the rift is over Brooklyn’s relationship with Nicola Peltz, a 31-year-old actor best known as Brooklyn’s bride but also a presence in the Psycho spin-off series Bates Motel and the fourth Transformers film. The pair began dating in late 2019, confirmed their relationship in January 2022 and married in April 2022. The tabloids and their expert panel of body-language experts have predictably sought to paint Peltz as a fame-hungry American interloper, intent on sowing discontent within Britain’s first family. (Sound familiar?) Now Brooklyn has called that narrative “completely backwards”, saying that if anyone’s been trying to control him, it’s his parents. In painstaking detail, he describes the Beckhams’ disapproval of Peltz and persistent efforts to “ruin” their relationship. “My wife has been consistently disrespected by my family, no matter how hard we’ve tried to come together as one.” The night before his wedding, Brooklyn writes, “members of my family told me that Nicola was ‘not blood’ and ‘not family’” (begging the question: who did they want him to marry?). Though imprecise about the exact legalities, Brooklyn also claims that he was pressured by his parents to sign “away the rights” to the Beckham name, seemingly to prevent Peltz from staking a claim as his bride-to-be.