Royal protocol is ever-evolving—take selfies, for example, which were once all but banned, but now happen with regularity between royal family members and the public. The monarch sets the tone when it comes to royal protocol—Queen Elizabeth had guidelines she went by, and now, King Charles has his own.
One manner in which the King has broken royal protocol of yesteryear? Unexpectedly, with a kiss. Earlier this week, Charles and Queen Camilla visited the Channel Islands, where they stopped by the St. Peter Port seafront and mingled with well-wishers, Bustle reports. In a video posted on X by the BBC, “Charles is seen exchanging words with an elderly woman in the crowd,” Bustle writes. “In a rare move, the King then offers his cheek to the woman.” She was later identified as 91-year-old Kathleen Moriarty—who proceeded to kiss the King.
“I said to him, ‘Please, can I give you a kiss?’” she told the BBC after the exchange. “And he gives me his cheek. I just did it! I didn’t plan it, and I enjoyed it. He’s lovely. It was very nice. I am pleased. I thought if all these young dolly birds can do it, this old lady can!”
Though kissing the monarch is certainly unusual, this actually isn’t the first time Charles has allowed himself to be kissed during a royal engagement. Shortly after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth, in September 2022, the new King greeted well-wishers outside of Buckingham Palace who came to pay their respects. In footage shared by CNN, a well-wisher named Jenny Assiminios spoke briefly to Charles before planting a kiss on his cheek. “I have seen him in front of me,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it, and I said to him, ‘May I kiss you?’ He said, ‘Well, yes,’ so I grabbed him, and I was very happy.” She later told CNN “Thank you, God, for letting me see him and kiss him.”
The official royal family website says of royal protocol that “There are no obligatory codes of behavior” when meeting the King or Queen, but members of the public—as well as the royal family themselves—usually “wish to observe the traditional forms,” which, for men, include a neck bow from the head only, and for women, a small curtsy; shaking hands with a monarch “in the usual way” is also commonplace, it adds.
When Charles was kissed earlier this week, he “took it in stride, shaking Kathleen’s hand and giving her a wry smile,” The Daily Mail’s Natasha Livingstone reports, adding “For a 75-year-old undergoing cancer treatment, it’s a heartening sign that he is on the mend.”
But Livingstone correctly pointed out that “an act of such intimacy may have provoked a very different response during the reign of the late Queen.” Royal biographers like Andrew Morton have said Her late Majesty would “never” have allowed a member of the public to kiss her, noting that she had a “different kind of style” from her son, one Livingstone calls “informal formality,” which is reflective of “his chilled-out approach to enthusiastic glad-handing,” she wrote. “So is the new edict ‘You may now kiss…the King?’”
