Meghan, Duchess of Sussex/Instagram; Anwar Hussein/Getty
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Meghan Markle shared a new photo of Prince Harry and Princess Lilibet to celebrate Valentine's Day
In the image, Lili is wearing a pink top and skirt with matching leggings, hinting that she may be a budding ballerina
Her grandmother Princess Diana was a lover of ballet and even took years of secret dance lessons
Meghan Markle's latest photo of her 4-year-old daughter,Princess Lilibet, hints that she might have a budding ballerina on her hands.
The Duchess of Sussex, 44, posted aValentine's Day tributeto her family on Saturday, Feb. 14. She shared a sweet photo ofPrince Harry, 41, carrying Lilibet, who held a bunch of red balloons.
"These two + Archie = my forever Valentines," she captioned the pic, adding a reference to her unpictured son, 6-year-oldPrince Archie.
In the image, Lilibet looks ready for ballet class, dressed in an all-pink ensemble, complete with matching tights.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex/Instagram
A love for dance runs in the family. One of Meghan's classmates at Northwestern Universityshared a shotof her taking a salsa class back in 2024.
However, the passion for ballet goes back further in the family line, to one of Lili's royal namesakes:Princess Diana. Harry's late mother took ballet classes as a young girl and frequently attended performances at the National Ballet in London.
She also took years ofsecret dance lessonsafter joining the royal family. Her dance teacher, Anne Allan, looked back on their time together in her 2024 book,Dancing With Diana: A Memoir, recalling how the studio became a place of refuge for Diana.
"She loved to dance. The minute she started to move her arms, you could see the feeling that it brought her," Allantold PEOPLEahead of her book's release. "She was able to be herself. She loved to move and loved to have fun."
She added, "If something was on her mind, she would say so. Later on, there were days where she would come in and just talk a little bit."
Diana even famously recruited ballet dancer Wayne Sleep to help her surprise then-Prince Charleswith a dance performance at the Royal Opera House in December 1985.
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There is no video of the performance, which was choreographed to the Billy Joel hit "Uptown Girl." But it wasfamously recreatedin season 4 ofThe Crown, when Emma Corrin's Diana shocks Josh O'Connor's Charles with the performance, in which she thrills the audience by dancing in a silky dress.
Sleep reflected on the performance in a 2017 column forThe Guardian, in which he recalled how the performance came together.
"We met in a rehearsal studio in west London," he wrote. "She was in leg-warmers and a leotard. My first thought was, 'She's too tall to dance with me, I'll be a laughing stock.' I'm 5 feet 2 inches, and she's 5 feet 11 inches. But I soon realized she had a good sense of humor, and that we could have some fun with our height difference."
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Sleep recalled how Diana snuck out of the royal box to meet him backstage. Then, they made their debut.
"She walked out for eight counts…and then stopped, looked at the audience beautifully, and there was a gasp from the audience of 2,500 people who took an intake of breath all at the same time," he said. "They were speechless, and she was onfire.She took it, embraced [it] like she had been doing it for hundreds of years."
When they finished, to raucous applause, Sleep said he reminded Diana to box to the royal box. She refused, quipping, "I'm not bowing to him; he's my hubby."
The pair remained friends in the following years, Sleep recalled.
"She came to my London performances, and would always pop into the dressing room afterwards," he wrote."And she would often visit me for dinner at my flat in South Kensington."
"She would kick off her shoes, and we'd have a giggle, talking about this and that: her kids, my work, nothing controversial. I'd cook, and she'd wash up," Sleep added. "Later, I knew things were going wrong in her marriage, but I never asked, and she never brought it up."
Read the original article onPeople
