Meghan Markle has spent six years trying to prove she doesn’t need the Royal Family to remain relevant. Yet somehow, she keeps finding herself orbiting the very institution she walked away from. This week offered another rather awkward example.

Meghan, 45, stepped out alongside Prince Harry in Canada wearing a dramatic £1,329 [$1,795] Greta Constantine gown, complete with Princess Diana’s diamonds and all the ingredients required for a headline-grabbing moment. Yet within hours, royal watchers were comparing her to Princess Catherine.

Not exactly the result you want when you’re trying to command the spotlight in your own right.

Meghan and Harry walked away from royal life in 2020 insisting they wanted something different. Six years later, however, much of what keeps the Sussexes in the headlines remains curiously intertwined with the institution they left behind.

Look at the Invictus Games. Harry returned to Britain this summer for the one-year countdown while Meghan stayed away.

Yet she still found a way into the conversation, sharing carefully selected behind-the-scenes glimpses of family life, including Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet at Althorp.

She wasn’t at Invictus. But Meghan was still part of the Invictus news cycle – funny, that.

Then came what I can only describe as the Sussexes’ faux royal tour of Australia in April. Meghan and Harry may no longer represent the Crown, but you could have been forgiven for forgetting it.

The receptions. The engagements. The cameras. The carefully curated wardrobe. It all looked remarkably familiar. There was just one rather important detail missing: they weren’t actually on a royal tour.

And therein lies the problem. Meghan appears determined to retain many of the ingredients that once made royal life so intoxicating – the attention, the ceremony, the international platform – while remaining entirely separate from the institution that gives those things their significance.

Catherine, 44, has no need to recreate any of it.When the Princess of Wales steps onto the world stage, there is no question about what she represents or why she’s there.

She isn’t playing at royalty. She is royalty.

The contrast becomes even more obvious when you look at what both women have chosen to build.

Catherine has spent years developing her work around the early years, culminating in a long-term project that has become intrinsically associated with her public role.

Meghan needed her own defining second act. Enter, As Ever. Her lifestyle brand was supposed to be a great comeback: Meghan the entrepreneur, tastemaker and California lifestyle guru, finally building something entirely on her own terms.

Yet the uncomfortable comparison remains. Catherine’s influence comes from a role she has spent years growing into. Meghan is repeatedly having to create new vehicles through which to maintain hers.

One has a platform built into her position. The other has to keep building platforms.

While fashion trends overlap all the time, it’s almost beside the point. This should have been Meghan’s moment.

Instead, Catherine somehow ended up in the conversation without saying a word, attending the event, or even leaving the house. That’s quite a feat.

For all the comparisons between these two women over the years, their positions today couldn’t be more different.

Meghan can launch another brand. She can stage another high-profile appearance. She can embark on something that looks remarkably like a royal tour. She can even find herself wearing a silhouette that resembles her sister-in-law. But she cannot manufacture what Catherine possesses.

Princess Catherine is the Princess of Wales, wife of the future King and mother of the heir. She sits at the very heart of the monarchy Meghan chose to leave behind.

Meghan can spend years trying to prove she commands the same attention from thousands of miles away. She can launch businesses, embark on high-profile trips and create headline-grabbing moments of her own.

But she cannot replicate Catherine’s position. And she certainly cannot compete her way back into it.

Perhaps that is the uncomfortable truth Meghan still needs to accept. The more she appears to measure herself against Catherine, the more obvious the gulf between their lives becomes.

Meghan doesn’t need to become the Californian answer to Princess Catherine. She needs to work out what being Meghan Markle actually means.