Daily Times

Meghan Markle hasn’t even been an official royal for a month and she’s already experienced a slew of firsts. The newly minted Duchess of Sussex attended her first engagement as a royal just three days after tying the knot with Prince Harry, made her Trooping the Colour debut on Saturday and on Thursday, Meghan embarked on her first solo outing alongside Queen Elizabeth.

Her sister-in-law, Kate Middleton, didn’t have her first engagement with the Queen until almost a year after marrying Prince William in April 2011. She and Queen Elizabeth, joined by Prince Philip, traveled to Leicester by train from Kings Cross St. Pancras Station as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee tour of the U.K in March 2012.

Both royals went with a pencil skirt look for their outings. Kate wore a teal peplum suit by British designer L.K. Bennett and a pillbox hat by James Lock. For her first solo outing with Queen Elizabeth, Meghan opted for a light beige pencil dress with a cape top by Givenchy (her wedding dress designer!).

Meghan and the Queen, 92, also traveled by rail, though they took the royal train to Cheshire. They helped open a new bridge in Widnes, Cheshire, and celebrated the opening of the Storyhouse Theatre before having lunch at Chester’s Town Hall.

When Kate traveled with the Queen, they stopped at Leicester Cathedral and De Montfort University, where the princess, then 30, selected the winner of a contest to design a shoe for her.

“They were chatting away,” Lord Waheed Alli, chancellor of the university, told PEOPLE at the time. “Kate would ask me things and then tell the Queen.”

Meghan and the Queen were also happily chatting away as they took in a children’s dance performance on Thursday.

Published in Daily Times, June 16^th 2018.