Kate was praised for standing up in the public’s presence. Meghan was criticised for her curtsy. A viral TikTok turned the comparison into a global conversation.

In March 2025, a video of Catherine, Princess of Wales, arriving at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade at Wellington Barracks went viral on TikTok. As Kate walked along a line of people filming on their phones, a crowd rose to its feet out of respect. The video was posted to TikTok with the caption “Respect” and was liked 46,000 times and viewed 679,800 times. Comments praised her as “grace and dignity,” “a true royal,” “everything a Princess should be.”

Shortly after, a clip of Meghan Markle recounting her first curtsy to Queen Elizabeth — taken from a Netflix documentary — circulated alongside the Kate video. In the clip, Meghan described the curtsy as something she got wrong, comparing the experience to “medieval times, dinner and tournament.” She described it in self-deprecating, slightly comedic terms.

Many viewers interpreted the contrast between Kate’s natural command of the ceremonial moment and Meghan’s slightly irreverent retelling as evidence of a fundamental difference in approach. Comments on the comparison posts described Meghan’s retelling as “disrespectful” and Kate’s as “what a real royal looks like.”

Harry’s memoir “Spare” states that Meghan “dropped a deep, flawless curtsy” at the meeting — a description that contradicts her own retelling to Netflix. The discrepancy was noted by Newsweek, which reported on the contrast in November 2025.

Whether the comparison is fair — a carefully filmed official engagement versus an off-the-cuff documentary anecdote — is a question that the comment sections did not pause to consider. The contrast went viral because it confirmed what many people already believed. That is how viral content works. That is also, increasingly, how royal reputations are built and dismantled.