Is Meghan Markle Copying King Charles? Duchess Shares Unusual Glimpse Into Montecito Life With Lilibet

Meghan Markle posted a pair of Instagram videos from her Montecito home on Thursday showing off her chicken coop and a fleeting appearance from Princess Lilibet, just hours after King Charles was filmed feeding hens during a visit to a community project in New York. The brief clips, shared on the Duchess of Sussex's personal account, immediately prompted fresh comparisons between Markle and the king's well-documented love of rural life.

The timing of the videos raised eyebrows because of the royal backdrop. Earlier in the day, King Charles had toured Harlem Grown, a community organisation in Upper Manhattan that converts derelict plots into urban farms, where he was pictured gently tossing feed to a flock of chickens alongside local schoolchildren. The images, distributed across news and social media, were widely picked up before Meghan's almost synchronised poultry content landed on her stories.

Markle's Montecito Chickens and a Glimpse of Lilibet

Markle's clips were filmed in what appears to be the chicken coop at the Sussexes' California estate, a set-up she has showcased before as part of her image of relaxed, eco-conscious domestic life. This time, though, she invited an unusual guest into the hen house.

Standing beside her was a chocolatier from Los Angeles brand Compartes, with whom Meghan recently partnered for her lifestyle venture's Mother's Day collection. In the footage, he is seen scattering feed for the birds while the duchess guides him around, sounding pleased, even a touch amused, at the novelty of the scene.

In one of the two short videos, Meghan can be heard laughing as she narrates: 'When the chocolate man comes to see the chickens. Compartes is here.' She then swings the camera to show off one of her hens, as if giving viewers a personal tour of her home menagerie rather than a carefully managed social-media moment.

It is not the chickens, however, that are likely to draw the most scrutiny from royal watchers. For a brief moment, Princess Lilibet appears in the background, wearing a pink dress and playing by the coop. Her face is not the focus, her voice only faintly audible as she says something to her mother. Meghan responds off camera: 'Thanks sweetheart.'

The appearance is small but notable. Harry and Meghan have tightly controlled images of their children, and any new sighting of Lilibet, now a toddler, tends to be closely examined. Whether this reflects a deliberate softening of that stance or simply a candid moment left in the cut is impossible to know from the footage alone. Nothing has been confirmed, so any interpretation of the decision to include Lilibet should be treated with caution.

King Charles, Harlem Chickens and Copying Claims

The parallel images of King Charles and Markle feeding chickens, posted within hours of each other, have inevitably led to pointed headlines asking whether the duchess is copying the king's rustic persona. It is not a subtle juxtaposition.

On Wednesday, Charles visited Harlem Grown, an organisation that describes its mission as tackling 'systemic health, education and wellbeing challenges' for children and families in Upper Manhattan by transforming abandoned city lots into sustainable farms. The project offers safe spaces, school programmes and access to healthy food, particularly for communities that historically have had far less of it.

During the visit, the king watched schoolchildren plant seedlings and work an irrigation set-up before joining them in the on-site chicken coop, carefully feeding the birds as cameras rolled. This is a familiar register for Charles, who has spent decades cultivating a reputation as a champion of organic farming and environmental causes long before they were fashionable.

After leaving the farm, he went on an impromptu walkabout in the neighbourhood. At one point, a woman thanked him for his address to the US Congress, telling him: 'We needed that.' Charles replied simply: 'I keep trying.' It was a small exchange, but one that underscored his elder statesman positioning on the world stage.

Against that backdrop, Meghan's chicken content can look, depending on interpretation, like either a playful coincidence or a carefully timed echo. Supporters would argue she has long presented herself as someone happiest in jeans and wellies fussing over rescue hens, and that the collaboration with a chocolatier in her coop sits neatly within her lifestyle branding. Critics, meanwhile, may see the rapid succession of images as part of an ongoing effort to mirror or compete with royal optics from the other side of the Atlantic.

There is, as ever with the Sussexes, more speculation than evidence. What can be said with certainty is limited to what appears on the screen: Markle welcoming a business partner into her Montecito chicken run, King Charles encouraging children in Harlem as they feed their own flock, and a small girl in a pink dress darting through the background of a social-media story, already part of a narrative she did not choose.