Imagine, if you will, a pair of 30-something brothers. The older brother has been with his wife, who he met at university, for 14 years. The younger brother recently married a woman he had known for a year and a half beforehand, who he met through mutual friends.

These brothers are very different people, but their respective partners are… eerily similar. They look the same, sound the same, dress the same, act the same. Their upbringings were near-identical, and they share almost all of the same interests. For all intents and purposes, the two women are the same person.

If you knew these people, you’d probably think that there was something a bit odd going on. Right? We don’t usually expect sisters-in-law to have identical backgrounds and personalities, particularly if they met their partners at very different times in their lives – and especially if their partners themselves aren’t all that alike.

Take a look at the tabloid coverage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s engagement, however, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the opposite was true. Buried amongst all the breathless pieces about Markle’s wardrobe and what Princess Diana would have really thought, a peculiar subgenre of article has emerged – one that is obsessed with pointing out, in astonished tones, all the differences between Markle and Kate Middleton.

The comparison between the two has continued in the year since Harry and Meghan’s engagement, culminating in the breathless reports that the newlyweds will be moving from Kensington Palace – where they neighbour William and Kate – to Frogmore Cottage in Windsor. According to tabloid reports, Harry and Meghan’s decision to move more than a hundred miles from William and Kate is because the sisters-in-law can’t stand each other.

“Meghan Markle vs Kate Middleton: the dark subtext to the tabloid headlines”