So Serena Williams was at the royal wedding—wearing sneakers to the reception—and, according to USA Today, has offered Meghan, the new Duchess of Sussex, advice on how to handle some of the more extreme aspects of fame, such as being chased by paparazzi.

This is proof, as Mark Twain supposedly said, that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

That’s because there is more to this than the old connection between tennis and the British royal family. The less-than-six-degrees-of-separation includes the morsel that, in 1926, the future King of England—then known as Prince Albert or “Bertie” before he became George VI 10 years later—competed in doubles at Wimbledon, the sport’s premier event. George VI, of course, was father to the current queen, Elizabeth II, whose daughter-in-law Diana came to regard elite tennis players with the same sort of awe that commoners had for her and other royals.

In the 1990s, Diana recruited Steffi Graf, whose record for most Grand Slam singles titles in the open era finally was surpassed by Williams last year, to give tennis lessons to Diana’s two sons. And now the younger son, Harry, has married Meghan Markel and made her a duchess.

It was Graf and other high-profile tennis champs, Monica Seles and Virginia Wade among them, who compared with Diana the difficulties of being so much in the limelight, how “the royalty had that sort of glare all the time,” Wade said.

When Diana was killed in the 1997 automobile accident precipitated by pursuing tabloid photographers, Seles recalled having been spooked by a similar incident seven years earlier: In Paris (where Diana died). With Seles’ chauffeured car struck by stalking paparazzi (just as happened to Diana).

Diana had met so many tennis stars by attending each summer’s Wimbledon tournament, where she regularly was seated in the royal box and, according to Wade, was “the life and light of the royal box…not just there because she had to be there, but really interested.” (I took the photo below in 1986, when the press seating was located just to the right and above the royal box.)

Diana reportedly played tennis at least twice a week and, months before her death, revived her occasional friendly competitions with Graf in a semi-public match to inaugurate a new women’s tennis headquarters in London. Local media had been invited to the event but, according to veteran English tennis writer John Parsons, the press’ vantage point allowed only a glimpse of the ball moving back and forth. Neither player could be seen, so Parsons’ estimation that Diana produced some impressively long rallies may very well have been aided by Graf.

When Diana died, during the 1997 U.S. Open in New York, Seles reported that television sets in the players’ lockerroom all were tuned to the latest news of the fatal accident, “instead of the usual tennis.” Current and former players stopped to recall their interactions with the princess.

Christ Evert said she had had tea with Diana more than once. John McEnroe remembered that she had spoken to him about a common hardship: Divorce. Wade reminisced about the time she bumped into Diana while Diana was trying on shoes on London’s fashionable Sloane Street. “She leaps out of her seat to say hello,” Wade marveled.

An example of how celebrity rhymes.

Now, whatever Duchess Meghan’s relationship to Serena Williams, it is logical that each can identify with the other’s place at the other end of prying cameras.