Years before she even met Prince Harry, Meghan Markle had set about using her own experience to inspire young women.
Then starring in legal TV drama Suits, she penned emotional essays about race and women's rights, gave motivational interviews and filled her old blog, The Tig, with inspirational quotes.
According to her college best friend Lindsay Roth, one Meghan's favourite mottos for life was "I choose happiness."
Determined, ambitious and with an unquenchable desire to be a star, another of her favourites was: "Of this be sure: You do not find the happy life… you make it."
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Which perhaps inspired a 2013 reconnaissance trip to the UK where radio host Lizzie Cundy said Meghan confided that she wanted out of harsh Hollywood.
"She said that she could only be in Suits for so long and that Hollywood was a really brutal place," Lizzie previously said after meeting Meghan at the Global Gift Foundation's London Gala.
"She had not made a breakthrough, and said she would feel at home in London."
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Her desire to start afresh was summed up in a quote she shared by F Scott Fitzgerald.
"Be brave. Live the life you want – it's worth its weight in gold," she told her Instagram followers of the passage which said: "It's never too late, or too early to be whoever you want to be."
To facilitate her reinvention, Lizzie claimed Meghan had her eye on a gig in reality TV and a British boyfriend to go with it.
"She told me she wanted to be on an English reality TV show and that she wanted an English boyfriend," Lizzie continued.
"She set her sights on Made In Chelsea and worked hard to get in with that crowd.
"We were having a chat and then she said: 'Do you know any famous guys? I'm single and I really love English men.' So I said: 'We'll go out and find you someone.'"
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There was apparently one guy sniffing around – none other than footballer love rat Ashley Cole.
Fresh from his split with Cheryl, Meghan apparently told Lizzie he'd slid into her DMs and had been "trying really hard" to land a date.
That was until a UK journalist informed Meghan of his cheating past and she returned to Canada and got with celebrated chef Cory Vitiello.
By the time Meghan returned to the UK in 2016, the reality wheels are said to have been firmly in motion.
She'd become good friends with MIC's Millie Mackintosh and her co-star Jessica Woodley.
Lizzie – who met her again on that trip – said: "She was hoping to get a role on the show. She had also got to know TV presenter Natalie Pinkham and Bidders — Adam Bidwell — who was a friend of Harry's from that trip to Vegas."
"She still wasn't much more successful in Hollywood terms and was setting her sights on coming here to live if she could. She wanted it bad, and she did still want an English boyfriend."
And her dream came true when she met Prince Harry on that very holiday.
However, those she'd met along the way – including Lizzie and Millie – didn't score an invite to her big day, with Lizzie claiming Meghan was advised to cut ties with everyone she'd befriended in the media.
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