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TL;DR: 

  • A panel at the 2018 Royal Foundation Forum marked Meghan Markle’s first royal engagement. 
  • Meghan Markle appeared “polished, passionate and funny,” Katie Nicholl wrote in The New Royals.
  • According to the book, Prince William and Kate Middleton realized they had to “up their game.”

A new book says that an appearance with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle served as a “wake-up moment” for Prince William and Kate Middleton. According to Katie Nicholl’s The New Royals, the Prince and Princess of Wales realized they had to “up their game” because of their sister-in-law’s stellar performance.

Prince William, Kate Middleton, Prince Harry, and Meghan Markle spoke on a Royal Foundation Forum panel in 2018

Meghan’s first royal engagement happened in early 2018. She and Harry joined William and Kate on a panel at the first annual Royal Foundation Forum in February 2018. It came just three months after Harry and Meghan’s engagement announcement in November 2017. 

On Feb. 28, 2018, Meghan and Harry joined Kate and William for a panel discussion. According to the British royal family’s website, they were there to talk about the foundation’s origins and future.

Not only did the event mark Meghan’s first royal engagement but also the foursome’s first official joint outing. Additionally, it was announced at the Forum that Meghan would be joining William, Kate, and Harry as a patron.

Prince William and Kate Middleton realized they had to ‘up their game’ after Meghan Markle’s ‘very impressive’ panel appearance

Prince William and Kate Middleton, who had a 'wake-up moment' at Meghan Markle's first royal engagement, the Royal Foundation Forum panel in 2018, sit next to Meghan Markle and Prince Harry
Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, Kate Middleton, and Prince William | Chris Jackson – WPA Pool/Getty Images

In The New Royals, Nicholl quoted an unnamed source about Meghan’s first royal engagement. 

“That was a wake-up moment for William and Kate when they realised [sic] that Meghan was very impressive, very confident and very capable,” Nicholl’s source told her per the U.K.’s Mirror.

“The Cambridges had already signalled [sic] their intention to be more than ‘ornamental royals’ and had, along with Harry, made a huge success of their mental health campaign Heads Together,” Nicholl wrote. 

“But Meghan was the breakout star of the foursome. She was polished, passionate and funny, using all her TV-honed skills to present her case,” the royal expert continued. 

Another royal author said Meghan Markle created an ‘awkward dynamic’ by going off-topic

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Tina Brown, royal expert and author, revisited the panel in her 2022 book, The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor—the Truth and the Turmoil. She wrote Meghan made for an “awkward dynamic” in the group. 

“With blithe proprietorship, she deployed an issue that was not even on the foundation’s docket — women’s empowerment, then at its fervid height with the acceleration of the #MeToo movement,” Brown wrote. 

“‘Women don’t need to find a voice. They have a voice. They need to feel empowered to use it,’ Meghan quotably exhorted as Harry looked on with awe and his brother and Kate stood by with expressionless irritation,” she continued. 

“When it was Kate’s moment to speak, she was strikingly less articulate, as well as brief,” the author wrote. Meanwhile, Meghan “championing a fashionable cause anointed by Hollywood” was “sure to make headlines.” 

Brown concluded it made for an “awkward dynamic,” noting “it was later decided the Fab Four would not play onstage together as a band again.”

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