A friendly greeting during one of Queen Camilla’s royal engagements turned into an etiquette disaster, and former royal butler Grant Harold sees it as a “sign of things to come.” While visiting Maggie’s, a cancer care charity in Gloucestershire, Queen Camilla was greeted with an overly-friendly hug and kiss, rather than a more formal curtsy. Speaking on behalf of OLBG, former royal butler Grant Harold declared the interaction “a massive break of royal protocol,” but praised Queen Camilla for her “relaxed” reaction.
“Officially, this is a massive break of royal protocol,” Harold, who worked as a butler for King Charles from 2004 to 2011, shares. “When meeting a royal, you should curtsy.” While some have compared the practice to medieval times, a curtsy is a show of respect and reverence for tradition. “If you’re friends or know each other well, the royal may come forward for a kiss or a hug,” Harold clarifies, “but it should be entirely led by the royal.”
“The fact that Camilla went along with it is very telling," Harold says about the "over familiar" interaction. “It would have been very different if it was Queen Elizabeth.” The late sovereign was a stickler for protocol, and liked to keep traditions as formal as possible. Grant Harold says that Queen Camilla’s reaction to the more informal interaction “shows how much more relaxed [the Queen] is about things, and the King actually, especially when it comes to meeting and greetings.”
“Things have changed over the decades,” the former royal butler reveals. “We would never have seen it with senior members of the family before, especially not the wife of the monarch.” Harold feels that these relaxed interactions with members of the public are “becoming completely normal, which is really interesting and a sign of things to come.”
