During the recent Chelsea Flower Show – an annual event whose target audience is mostly senior citizens – Kate Middleton made a splash with her new garden aimed at young families to encourage them to bring their children outside and enjoy something other than an electronic device.
Kate recently showed her creation to her husband, Prince William, and their three children: Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis. But it was a visit from Queen Elizabeth, who indicated that there was a shift in the royal family.
An extraordinary kiss
When Queen Elizabeth stopped at Kate Middleton’s garden, cameras captured an extraordinary moment that royal fans have never seen before. Instead of greeting her majesty with the traditional bow, Kate kissed the queen on both cheeks for a quick bow.
Although this may not seem that important, the informal greeting is actually huge news. No matter what things can be behind closed doors, when they are in public, the royal family has everything to do with tradition, symbolism and image.
For the queen to allow Kate’s camera cushion, the king gives the future queen consort an important stamp of approval, news.com.au says.
Did the royal family forget where they were?
Tradition is of the utmost importance when the royal family is in public. They always run in order of rank and importance, and when they arrive somewhere, it is always in ascending order of importance.
Greetings to each other always contain a formal bow of the lower men and a bow of the lower placed women, but kissing is never part of the tradition.
Kate Middleton not only kisses the queen on both cheeks, but also Prince William. And this led some fans to wonder if they had forgotten where they were, because the formalities turned out to be a side issue.
“What struck me was that the kiss came before the bow or the bow. It must be how they do it normally. It’s as if the formal part was a side issue. I think they forgot that the cameras were there,” wrote a Royal fan on Twitter, while another added: “Interesting kisses for courtesy. I thought it would be more formal at first.”
Queen Elizabeth clearly loves Kate Middleton
Earlier this year, Kate joined the Queen for an official solo visit and her majesty also gave Kate the highest honor she could give her – she made her a Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO).
Several reports claim that the 93-year-old queen plans to retire when she turns 95 and will ask for legislation to give the throne to her son, Prince Charles. As the longest ruling monarch in British history, Queen Elizabeth has been on the throne for 67 years.
However, the family knows that a transition will take place sooner and later, and that means that Prince William will soon become the heir and Kate the Princess of Wales, just one step away from Queen Consort.
It seems that Queen Elizabeth is more than happy with the job that Kate Middleton did 37 years ago. And with Prince Charles already 70 years old, his reign as the British monarch will be considerably shorter than that of his mother – who took the throne at the age of 25. This means Kate’s transition from Princess of Wales to Queen Consort is likely to happen when she is still relatively young.
The social media war continues between the Cambridges and the Sussexes
While Prince William and Kate Middleton are preparing for the succession line, they still don’t seem to be as popular as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle – at least on social media. Since they split their Instagram accounts, Meghan and Harry’s @SussexRoyal get more opinions and likes than William and Kate’s @KensingtonRoyal.
A simple photo of Prince Harry during a public speech recently scored nearly 300,000 likes, while a similar image of Prince William received only about 122,000. The sweet pictures of William and Kate’s children in Kate’s garden reached nearly a million likes, while a picture of the feet of baby Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor reached more than two million.
No matter how popular Harry and Meghan are, their future is very different from that of William and Kate. Succession to the throne is about the birth order, not about Instagram likes. And the approval of the queen by Prince William and Kate Middleton is really the only thing that matters.
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