In the days since his mother died, King Charles appeared to lose his temper on a couple of occasions, leaving people taken aback by his outbursts.
At the accession council last Saturday, an irritated Charles had signalled for aides to move a pen holder and pens that had got in his way as he signed documents. Then four days later while on a trip to Northern Ireland he reacted after the pen he was using leaked on him.
Were his momentary flashes of temper down to pressure, or was it a family trait? We looked at whether the Queen ever lost her temper in a similar fashion.
Although the Queen seems to have displayed a remarkable calmness while on public duty, one of the rare occasions when she momentarily lost her composure include a photocall in 2007 with Annie Leibovitz, the American photographer.
BBC cameras caught an exchange when Leibovitz told the monarch that a photo would look better if her crown was removed. She said: “It would look better … less dressy … because the garter robe is so …”
The Queen exclaimed: “Less dressy?” Gesturing to her outfit, she asked: “What do you think this is?” She was later filmed saying: “I’m not changing anything. I’ve had enough dressing like this, thank you very much.”
The BBC later had to apologise to the Queen after admitting it “misrepresented” her by implying she stormed out of the photoshoot and that the sequence of events in its documentary had been misrepresented.
Another instance was cited in the 2002 documentary The Queen: A Remarkable Life, directed by Alan Scales, which showed the Queen watching her husband, Prince Philip, participating in carriage driving.
The narrator said: “In Windsor Great Park, the Queen was watching Philip doing some carriage driving. However, she is not amused when a crowd of nosy photographers gets in her way.”
The footage showed the Queen gesturing to the crowds of photographers to disperse before shouting: “Do you mind!”
And in Ingrid Seward’s biography Prince Philip Revealed, the author wrote of a row between the Queen and her husband on an Australian tour in 1954.
The book tells how a camera crew who were filming a documentary saw Philip charge out of the chalet the couple were staying in, followed by “a flying pair of tennis shoes and a racket and a very angry Queen shouting for him to come back”.
In 2016, Prince William, now the Prince of Wales, appeared to be reprimanded by the Queen during the trooping the colour procession marking her 90th birthday.
The prince had crouched down to speak to his elder son, George, at the front of the Buckingham Palace balcony while they watched the traditional RAF flypast.
It prompted the Queen to stare at him before telling him “stand up William”, which he sheepishly did and then started a conversation with her.
