With just a few months before her wedding to Prince Harry, bride-to-be Meghan Markle has become the people’s favorite new princess to be welcomed into the royal family.

​

The past 40 years have marked some influential new members of the British royal family, coincidentally all female, including Diana, Kate, Prince Edward’s wife, Sophie, and Prince Andrew’s ex, Fergie.

​

However, in just a matter of 18 months before Prince Harry and Meghan announced their  engagement, the American actress swept the people off their feet, sparking the same, if not more, publicity than Prince William and Princess Kate’s arrival of their third child in April.

​

Unlike Meghan and Harry, Kate and William dated almost ten years before announcing their engagement, during which they had split up once and got back together. Kate unfortunately was branded with the name, “Waity Katie,” as a result of the couple’s marriage stallment, which discouraged the people’s idea of a refreshing and impulsive royal romance. Once Kate had finally entered the public light, her first impressions from the people were not entirely welcoming, according to The Daily Beast. Although it was under William’s orders that all interview requests to her be refused, Kate did not attend any interviews and didn’t make any solo appearances in public for over a year after her marriage. She also made it a point to dress in “High Street,” or mass market clothing, instead of designer frocks.

​

Meghan, on the other hand, has been branded with her signature nickname, “The Markle Sparkle,” after sharing several accounts of her down-to-earth personality and true generosity for the people.

​

Her continuous efforts over the past several months have been closely compared to those of the late Princess Diana, including the recent exposure of Markle’s top-secret visits to comfort the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire which broke out in June 2017 in North Kensington. According to E News, undercover missions like this one is highly unusual for Royal schedules, since most are planned weeks, if not months, in advance.

​

"Meghan's visits mean so much to us. She has a special place in our hearts," said one community member who was able to meet her.

​

Meghan’s secret visits to the victims have been compared to the days when Diana would sneak out of the Kensington Palace to visit hospital patients and the homeless, in which on one account, she brought along 12-year-old William to visit a shelter to help him understand how different life really was beyond the palace gates.

​

The member-to-be has turned heads due to her royal inexperience and casual demeanor. (If you don’t count her glamorous life in Hollywood.) However, this persona has been considered as a real game changer in royal tradition, as she has been seen greeting fans with a normal, “Hi, I’m Meghan,” and even hugging fans, taking selfies with them, and signing autographs.

​

When Meghan isn’t greeting fans, she is breaking another royal British tradition; showing a whole lot of romantic PDA to her husband-to-be. Meghan is bringing the refreshing and impulsive romance back with confident hand holding, snuggling up to Harry in the cold, cracking inside jokes to him and slipping genuine smiles to the camera.

​

Prince Harry has been giving the same affection back to his bride-to-be. E News shared Harry’s thoughts of Meghan in his first post-engagement interview, in which he stated that if his mother was still alive, she would have been best friends with Meghan.

“Oh, they’d be thick as thieves, without question,” Harry added.

​

Meghan has been happily spotted hand-in-hand with her fiance, flashing her engagement ring which contains two diamonds that belonged to Diana.

​

Meghan’s impact on the people inside and outside the royal palace has returned a fresh perspective on life that has been missed from a special former Princess. As a family friend of Meghan once noted, Diana’s charity work has always been admired by Meghan.  

​

“With fame comes opportunity, but it also includes responsibility—to advocate and share, to focus less on glass slippers and more on pushing through glass ceilings,” said Meghan in an article from Elle magazine.

​

And glass ceilings she has certainly pushed, as her inspiring gender equality speech at the U.N. Women’s Conference in 2015 demonstrated how her 11-year-old self changed Proctor and Gamble’s tagline for dishwashing soap, “Women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans,” to, “People all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans.”

​

"It was at that moment that I realized the magnitude of my actions," Markle added. "At the age of 11, I had created my small level of impact by standing up for equality."

​

People around the globe are thrilled to see what other influential and inspiring things Markle will do next, especially with her marriage to Prince Harry in May marking her grand entrance into princesshood.