If the papers are to be believed, Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton have been “feuding” and “at war” since the the dawn of time. Or at least that’s what it feels like a mere nine months since the Royal Wedding. Whether it’s over their age, their looks or their politics, the tabloids – and indeed Channel 5, who aired a documentary titled Kate V Meghan: Princesses At War at the beginning of the year – refuse to believe that the two women could possibly get along.

According to these reports, the pair have “very different characters” – a phrase that can be translated into a simple rule, spewed onto the front pages every morning: if Kate makes the perfect princess, then Meghan is anything but. The adulation Kate received for wearing a white, one-shouldered dress to the BAFTAs compared to the scorn Markle garnered for a similar black gown she wore to the British Fashion Awards is a perfect example of the press’ insidious dislike for Meghan. She was “vulgar”; her sister-in-law an “angel” and a “vision”. It’s this incessant undermining of the more recently inducted royal that sets the battlefield for the princesses to apparently go head-to-head.

Just like Meghan and Kate, Princess Diana and Fergie were pitted against each other