During the hours of royal wedding coverage on Saturday, Meghan Markle wasn’t seen curtsying to the queen, leading many to believe she’d forgotten the crucial moment.
Markle and Prince Harry altered or skipped many major traditions at their wedding on Saturday, while they honored others without question. One of the biggest pieces of royal etiquette missing from the hours and hours of TV coverage was Markle’s curtsy to Queen Elizabeth.
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Social media immediately filled with indictments of Markle’s manners.
“Any idea why there was no curtsy to the Queen?” tweeted on person.
“Ok, forgive me if I missed it, but where was the [curtsy]?!” wondered another. “Huge mistake if that was missed. I mean, she has lent you her grandmothers tiara – take a moment to [curtsy]!”
Many felt that the 36-year-old former actress has forgotten or skipped over the important show of respect for the kingdom’s reigning monarch. However, according to a report by the Daily Mail, it was nothing more than a TV camera blunder.
The producers, apparently unaware that Markle was about to make the symbolic gesture, cut to an overhead camera angle that made it hard to see Markle’s curtsy. Only a few eagle-eyed Twitter users picked up on the moment, but they did their best to let everyone else online know.
“They actually did — the camera was right overhead so you couldn’t really tell they did it,” assured one royal admirer.
Still, some saw this as a massive failure on the part of the TV network.
“The BBC has committed a huge gaffe by not having been able to catch the Duchess of Sussex’s curtsy to the Queen,” wrote one person.
It wouldn’t have been too shocking even if Markle had decided to work around one more tradition. The bride picked and chose from the typical elements of a royal wedding, even using a modernized vow which did not include the archaic promise to “obey” her husband.
She followed in the footsteps first laid down by Prince Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, in her wedding vows in 1981. She removed the word “obey” from her vows, though the next two royal brides after her said it. In 2011, however, Kate Middleton chose to omit it again.
The vows used in deeply traditional weddings come from the church’s Anglican Book of Common Prayer, which dates back to 1662. In them, the groom promises “to love and cherish till death do us part,” while the bride vows to “love, cherish and obey” her husband.
These days, most weddings use those set down in the Common Worship book, which was introduced in 2000. They no longer include the word “obey.”
“I, (bride/groom name), take you, (groom/bride name) to be my wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward; for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part,” they read.
