The pricey gift Meghan Markle bought for Princess Lilibet years before her birth

Meghan Markle gave birth to Princess Lilibet, her second child with Prince Harry, in June 2021 - but she already had a gift for her daughter that she bought years before she was born.

While Lilibet and Archie, who are being raised in the couple's Santa Barbara mansion in California, are no doubt spoilt with gifts, there is one special gift that Meghan has for Lilibet that she's been holding onto for years.

Meghan opened up in an interview with Hello! magazine back in 2015 and revealed that she'd bought herself a special present which she planned to hand down to her future daughter. The former actor, who played Rachel Zane in legal drama Suits, confessed that when the show was renewed for a third season, she splashed out on a fancy £5,000 Cartier Tank Francaise watch - and even had a powerful personalised message engraved on the back to remind her of her achievements.

Meghan said, "I've always coveted the Cartier French Tank watch. When I found out Suits had been picked up for our third season – which, at the time, felt like such a milestone – I totally splurged and bought the two-tone version."

The message she had engraved on the back of the watch read, To M.M. From M.M and she added, "I plan to give it to my daughter one day. That’s what makes pieces special, the connection you have to them."

This means that she bought the watch and planned to give it to her future daughter years before she even met Prince Harry, who she started dating in 2016. 

But this isn't the only special watch in Meghan's possession. She also now has Princess Diana's Cartier Tank Française watch, which the late Princess regularly wore for engagements back in the 1990s. The watch was gifted to the late princess by her father on her 21st birthday and after it was passed to Harry, it is believed to have been given to Meghan in the early days of their relationship. 

Like Diana, Meghan also wears the watch regularly and sported it while reading her children's book, The Bench, in an appearance on YouTube. She also wore it for a photoshoot she and Harry did for Time magazine in 2020.

Meghan recently opened up about her parenting worries during the Archewell Foundation Parents’ Summit in New York.

Sitting alongside Harry, she said, "As parents, though our kids are really young, 2 1/2 and 4 1/2, but social media isn’t going away and by design. Being a mom is the most important thing in my entire life - outside, of course, being a wife to this one,” Meghan said, gesturing to Harry.

She added, "But I will say I feel fortunate that our children are at an age, again quite young, so this isn’t in our immediate future, but I also feel frightened at how it’s continuing to change and this will be in front of us. They say being a parent, the days are long but the years are short, so it worries me."