US President Joe Biden have violated multiple etiquettes when he met Queen Elizabeth II, a Royal expert claimed.
The monarchy has plenty of rules that separate their interactions with different people from normal meetings, and these protocols can be difficult for people to remember.
Grant Harrold, a previous butler to Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, heavily criticized the US president for not complying with the royal etiquette.
Biden’s biggest mistake seems to be wearing sunglasses.
In an interview with Newsweek, the former butler said that Biden was allowed to wear the sunglasses on the hot sunny day when he met the Queen, but he should have removed them for the formal introduction to her majesty.
“If you’re meeting the Queen face-to-face, there’s no sunglasses or anything like that at all because eye contact is quite important with any introduction,” Harrold said. “It’s fine for Biden to have had sunglasses on but he should have removed them when he actually met the Queen.”
“Everyone else has to, it doesn’t matter who you are, even royals remove sunglasses when they meet royals,” Harold explained. “It’s one of those rules I always write about in my etiquette texts.”
“It is a breach of protocol,” Harrold added. “I get the sun might have been shining in his eyes but the Queen didn’t have sunglasses on. Jill, the first lady, didn’t have sunglasses on.”
Despite this error, it seems that the meeting between the US president and the Queen was successful.
Russell Myers, the Royal editor for The Mirror discussed what happened during the meeting.
“They [Joe and Jill Biden] went for tea with the Queen, they extended their stay for a few minutes more than it should have gone on,” Myers said during an appearance on Lorraine. “Biden actually revealed that that the Queen was very, very interested in President Putin and President Xi Jinping from China, so very on her world affairs and it went smoothly.”
In a press conference, Biden claimed that the meeting had been a positive one and besides discussing politics, the Queen, who is 17 years older than him, reminded him of his mother.
“I don’t think she’d be insulted but she reminded me of my mother, the look of her and just the generosity,” Biden said.