Meghan Markle Is But One of Many Royal Sorority Girls: A Brief History

Being a member of a royal family is in many ways akin to being in a sorority: archaic rituals, an absurd amount of fancy dress-up occasions, traditional codes of behavior, philanthropy, living in a massive home with many roommates…but very few people have experienced both palace life and American Greek life. Most famously, Meghan Markle is one of them.

In 1999, Meghan enrolled in the prestigious Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and decided to rush. She joined Kappa Kappa Gamma, which was known for its “Midwestern blondes” who were “intelligent hot messes.”

“The thing we all have in common,” Kappa Kappa Gamma member Melania Hidalgo observed, per Andrew Morton’s Meghan and the Unmasking of the Monarchy, “is that we’re all very driven, ambitious, and passionate.”

And Meghan was just who they were looking for. “We just wanted to be sure that we secured her interest in our sorority,” sorority sister Coulter Bump told the Chicago Tribune. “She always had this manner to her of being very dignified and poised, just very appropriate in every circumstance. A person like that is what I wanted to ensure we had in our house, and luckily, she liked us back.”

Others in her 1999 pledge class agreed. “Meg was sort of always this ethereal, sophisticated, beautiful creature, who lived with us and was always willing to lend you a top,” fellow rushee Liz Kores Graham recalled.

One KKG member claimed pledges were not hazed, but that they were given a shirt inspired by Jem and the Holograms and taken out to the local Chuck E. Cheese when they joined.

Meghan decided to move into the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house. According to Tom Bower’s Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors, her father, Thomas Markle, “automatically volunteered to pay the annual $45,000 fees.”

A theater and international relations major, sorority sisters recall Meghan often rehearsing lines, cooking, and watching movies in the house. One sorority sister told the Chicago Tribune that Meghan was diplomatic when there were squabbles at the house. She was known as a fountain of fashion and makeup advice, and according to Bower, she loved the dating guide The Rules, the controversial self-help book by Sherrie Schneider published in 1995, reciting passages by heart. “She’s the total package,” one sister recalled.

According to Morton, Meghan worked hard in school but she also loved partying on weekends. Her first college boyfriend, Morton writes, was basketball player Steve Lepore, who raised her profile with her sorority sisters. They were reportedly “impressed that she had snared such a hottie.”

Always an extrovert, Meghan was tapped to be recruitment chair for Rush. “Meghan’s Greek life was less Animal House and more Elle Woods,” Omid Scobie writes in Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family. “As rush and recruitment chairman, she was in charge of bringing new people into the sorority and making them feel welcome.”

In this role, Meghan was instrumental in drawing many women into the KKG fold. “She was so engaging and she had such a huge smile on her face and she was such a really nice person and I remember thinking this is a house that I really want to be part of and I did end up joining that sorority,” Hailee Tellier remembered.

Not everybody found Markle quite so charming. “Sometimes she was a tad too persuasive, some students, according to classmate Ann Meade, thinking her overly assertive,” writes Morton.

Markle also threw herself into KKG’s charitable side as well. “She pledged to be philanthropic, care about her ‘sisters’ and abide by the motto ‘aspire to be’,” Bower writes. “She shone in her charity work, including the Glass Slipper Project that provided dresses for local teenage girls for their prom; and a 30-hour dance marathon to raise money for cancer sufferers.”

She also found lifelong besties in sorority sisters Genevieve Hillis and Lindsay Roth. But life as a biracial member of a majority-white sorority also had its challenges. Markle rarely talks about her sorority experience, but she briefly opened up about it earlier this year on her podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder.

“I was at Northwestern, and I moved into Kappa, our sorority there,” she continued. “I don’t even think they made plug-in flat irons at the time,” Meghan recalled. “They couldn’t! If they did, I didn’t know where they were, because I had the little stove, with the flat iron that would go in; have a paper towel on the side…. You’d pull it out, it would have the little scorch marks. And I remember most of the girls in the sorority who were not Black would say, ‘What’s that smell?’ Is hair burning?’ And it was just what you would do to figure out how to grapple with this texture of hair.”

Although Markle seems to have left the sorority firmly in the rearview mirror, who knows? In 10 or 15 years, we may see Princess Charlotte performing cheers at Tri Delta, or Princess Lilibet pledging as a legacy at Kappa Kappa Gamma. Only time (and how pledge week goes) will tell.

Meghan was far from the first American woman to marry into royalty. Grace Kelly, Rita Hayworth, Wallis Simpson, Lisa Halaby (Queen Noor of Jordan), Lee Radziwill, and Kendra Spears (Salwa Aga Khan) all came before her. Even more royals from around the world have attended universities in America, including Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden; Empress Masako of Japan; Pavlos, Crown Prince of Greece; Lady Gabriella Windsor Kingston; and Prince Albert of Monaco’s nephew, Louis Ducruet. But most seem to have eschewed Greek life, perhaps happy to be free of the rules of their clannish dynasties.

In fact, it is a Swedish and Norwegian Princess, who never lived or went to college in America, who holds the title as the first royal sorority girl.

And the first recorded royal honorary sorority girl was particularly touched by the honor. In 1939, the stylish and vivacious Crown Princess Märtha of Norway (born Princess Märtha of Sweden and Norway) and her husband, Crown Prince Olav, went on a wartime tour of America. The couple visited many places in the upper Midwest, which had large Swedish and Norwegian populations.

In perhaps the biggest get of all time, the Delta Zeta sorority house of the University of North Dakota was chosen as the place the royals would stay during their visit to Grand Forks, North Dakota. Thousands lined the street to watch the procession of the couple to the sorority house, where they were greeted by the leadership of Delta Zeta.

On June 8, 1939, Märtha and her lady-in-waiting were pinned by Delta Zeta national president Myrtle Malatt. On subsequent stops on the tour, Märtha attended events with her new sisters at the University of Wisconsin and Cincinnati University.

Märtha continued her association with the sorority after she returned to Norway. And when the princess visited America again in 1941, she made sure to wear a Delta Zeta pledge pin when she was reunited with her sisters. To this day, Delta Zeta still touts her membership.

But it would be the half-American Prince Albert, now the ruler of Monaco, who would become the first known full-fledged participant in Greek life.

In 1977, the Prince enrolled in Amherst University using the name Albert Grimaldi. Laid-back and chill, the prince pledged Chi Psi fraternity and lived in their frat house. According to The Grimaldis of Monaco: Centuries of Scandal, Years of Grace, Albert was quickly accepted by his peers, but hounded by the press. The soccer-playing political science major would later tell the Los Angeles Times that his frat boy years were “great fun.”

The first royal frat boy on record, though, may have been Grand Duke Alexei of Russia, the fifth child of Alexander II. Romantic and elegant, the grand duke went on a goodwill tour of the United States from 1871 to 1872, charming even President Ulysses S. Grant. While visiting Cincinnati, Ohio, frat brothers from the Delta Upsilon chapter at Marietta College reportedly initiated Alexis into the fraternity.

Some say he ignored the honor entirely, but apparently, the grand duke did not in fact forget his new brothers. According to the Buffalo Daily Republic, in 1874, the Delta Upsilon chapter received a package from St. Petersburg, bearing the Imperial coat of arms. Inside were 16 books, with a note saying the gift was “from the comptoir of the august children of their imperial majesties.”

In the future, who knows if we will see more royals participate in Greek life? Or perhaps, like Meghan Markle, they will put both royal and Greek life in the past and live a life set by their own rules and beliefs.