Queen Elizabeth And Meghan Markle Are Best Friends Forever

Queen Elizabeth II and Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle are best friends, text constantly, share secrets, speak their own made-up language, and have a bunch of inside jokes that you will never understand. Well, by royal standards. Marrying into England’s royal family, especially for an American, is a daunting task (remember Wallis Simpson?), but the Queen is reportedly making “a particular effort” to include Markle in the family.

Royal expert Duncan Larcombe said that “Meghan seems to have forged a particularly close relationship with the queen if you compare that to when other people have married into the royal family,” according to Fox News, and that other in-laws haven’t been so lucky. Prince William’s bride, Duchess Kate Middleton, didn’t get any special effort from the Queen, and the princes’ late mother Princess Diana reportedly felt left out of the royal family, though that may have been less about Queen Elizabeth and more about Princes Charles’ extramarital inclinations.

Markle, on the other hand, has been “fast-tracked” into the royal family, included in many public events and traditions. “The queen, last year in the first few months of Meghan’s entry into the royal family, made a particular and slightly unusual effort to welcome her in,” Larcombe said. There are also reports that Her Majesty invited the duchess to celebrate her recent thirty-eighth birthday at Balmoral Castle in Scotland; Balmoral is one of the queen’s favorite locations, and her vacation home every summer.

Another royal expert, Katie Nicholl, previously noted how quickly the two women bonded, and pointed out that Harry got both his father’s and his grandmother’s “seal of approval” to marry Markle. “I have been pleasantly surprised by how readily the queen, particularly, has welcomed Meghan into the royal family,” Nicholl told Fox earlier this year, adding, “I’ve been quite impressed by how much responsibility the queen has given Meghan.” Like we said, they’re the British version of besties.

Related: Meghan Markle Interviewed Michelle Obama About Motherhood for Her Issue of British Vogue