She’s about to become a full member of the Royal Family – and ahead of her wedding to Prince Harry in May, Meghan Markle has closed down all her social media accounts. It has been a while since she used any of them, but before meeting Harry she was a prolific Instragrammer and had a popular lifestyle website, the Tig. In December 2017, the US actress had 1.9 million people following her posts on Instagram, and more than 350,000 Twitter followers. Her Facebook page had almost 800,000 likes. A palace source said: ‘Ms Markle is grateful to everyone who has followed her social media accounts over the years, however as she has not used these accounts for some time she has taken the decision to close them.’

It’s in line with her changing status, as she will soon become a member of the royal family when she marries Harry in May. Senior members of the monarchy have official Twitter and Instagram accounts, run by the social media teams of their households, which do not normally feature personal tweets or posts. The exception is the Duke of York who sometimes writes tweets himself but signs them ‘AY’. Meghan will come under Kensington Palace when she is married to Harry and social media postings will be made on her behalf by its communications staff. Royal watchers were alerted to the growing importance of her relationship with Harry when her social media postings began to trail off during 2017. In April of last year she shut down her website.