Editing Merle Oberon (section)

===Parentage===
For most of her life, Oberon concealed the truth about her parentage by claiming that she had been born in [[Tasmania]], Australia to white parents,<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/04/04/british-raj-india-staying-on/|title=Staying On|last=Hastings|first=Max|journal=New York Review of Books|date=4 April 2019|access-date=3 April 2019|language=en|issn=0028-7504|archive-date=3 April 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190403025458/https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/04/04/british-raj-india-staying-on/|url-status=live}}</ref> and that her birth records had been destroyed in a fire. She identified as British.

She was raised as the daughter of Arthur Terrence O'Brien Thompson, a Welsh mechanical engineer from [[Darlington]] who worked in Indian Railways,<ref name=highmos21>Higham and Moseley 1983, p. 21.</ref> and his wife, Charlotte Selby (whose full name was Constance Charlotte Thompson, according to her 1937 obituary), who was born in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and was a Burgher from British Ceylon. Oberon's birth certificate lists her biological mother as "Constance Thompson",<ref name="Kodé">{{Cite news |first=Anna |last=Kodé |title=Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=2025-03-09 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/arts/merle-oberon-south-asian-hollywood-star.html |url-access=subscription |access-date=2025-03-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250410155458/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/arts/merle-oberon-south-asian-hollywood-star.html |archive-date=2025-04-10 |url-status=live}}</ref> which could have referred to either Constance Charlotte Selby or her then-14-year-old daughter, Constance Joyce Selby. It is theorized that Thompson [[Pregnancy from rape|impregnated his stepdaughter by rape]], with Charlotte raising Oberon as Constance's half-sister to avoid scandal. Neither Charlotte nor Constance acknowledged this theory during their lifetimes, and DNA testing did not exist then to determine paternity.<ref name=mystery>{{Cite web |url=http://merleoberon.net/# |title=Merle Oberon: Hollywood's Face of Mystery |access-date=4 May 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090504124519/http://merleoberon.net/ |archive-date=4 May 2009 |url-status=dead |df=dmy-all }}</ref><ref name="abc.net.au">{{cite web| url= http://www.abc.net.au/tv/documentaries/stories/s657300.htm|title='The Trouble With Merle' (TV Documentary)|website = abc.net.au|publisher=ABC TV (Australia)|access-date=19 September 2014|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051030144856/http://www.abc.net.au/tv/documentaries/stories/s657300.htm|archive-date = 30 October 2005}}</ref> Charlotte herself had given birth to Constance at the age of 14 after being raped by Henry Alfred Selby, the Anglo-Irish foreman of a tea plantation.<ref name=highmos18/> In their 1983 biography of Oberon, [[Charles Higham (biographer)|Charles Higham]] and Roy Moseley, known to write highly fictionalised accounts of celebrities, also averred dubiously {{clarify span|that Selby|reason=Which Selby does this refer to - rapist father Henry Alfred Selby, or victimized mother Charlotte Selby|date=March 2025}} had [[Māori people|Māori]] ancestry, though the [[Iwi]] (Maori tribe) was not known.<ref name=highmos18>Higham and Moseley 1983, 17-18.</ref>

Constance married Alexander Soares, with whom she had four children: Edna, Douglas, Harry, and Stanislaus. Edna and Douglas moved to the UK at an early age. Stanislaus, who lived in [[Surrey, British Columbia|Surrey, Canada]], was the only child to retain his father's surname of Soares. Harry eventually moved to Toronto, Canada, retaining grandmother Charlotte's maiden name, Selby. After locating Oberon's birth certificate in Indian government records in Bombay, Harry tried to visit her in Los Angeles, only for Oberon to refuse any meeting. When Higham and Moseley were working on their biography of Oberon, Harry withheld that he might have been Oberon's half-brother instead of her nephew; he later disclosed the information to Maree Delofski, producer of the 2002 [[Australian Broadcasting Corporation|ABC]] documentary ''The Trouble with Merle'', which investigated the conflicting versions of Oberon's origin,<ref name="abc.net.au"/> and repeated it to biographer [[Mayukh Sen]], who included it in the book ''Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star'' (2025).