When Meghan Markle and Prince Harry stepped away from “the Firm” back in 2020, the couple were almost immediately anointed royalty of a different kind. Alongside advocacy from the Clooneys, Serena Williams and Elton John, the Hollywood mogul Tyler Perry offered his Los Angeles home as a temporary refuge until they eventually settled in the hillside enclave of Montecito. The Sussexes’ entrance into this new elite was subsequently laid bare in a televised conversation with Oprah Winfrey, and later in the Netflix show Harry & Meghan, in which the Duchess received a text from Beyoncé, who told her she’d been selected to “break generational curses that need to be healed.”

Meghan and Harry first met the musician back in July 2019 at the London premiere of The Lion King, but in a sense their ties already ran deep. It was only five months earlier, after all, that Beyoncé and Jay Z had accepted a Brit award for Best International Group via a pre-recorded speech, which was delivered before an Elizabethan-style portrait of Meghan dressed in royal regalia. “Meghan’s charitable work in communities of color began years before becoming the Duchess of Sussex,” read a concurrent post on the #WeGood section of Beyoncé’s website, dedicated to celebrating Black cultural figures. “At the wedding her culture was front and centre, and she and Prince Harry have continued to push the race relations dialogue forward both near and far.”