Royal protocol is ever-evolving. For example, selfies, once banned, are now a daily occurrence between members of the royal family and the general public. Queen Elizabeth has her guidelines, and Prince Charles has his own.

One way the King broke former royal protocol' unexpectedly, with a kiss. Earlier this week, Prince Charles and Queen Camilla visited the Channel Islands, stopping at the seaside in St. Peter Port to mingle with well-wishers, “Bustle” reports, and a video posted by the BBC on X shows “Prince Charles exchanging words with an elderly woman in the crowd. Bustle writes. Unusually, the king offers the woman his cheek.” She was later identified as 91-year-old Kathleen Moriarty, who kissed the king.

“I said to him, 'Please, may I kiss you? ' And he put his cheek against mine. I just did! I didn't plan it, and it was fun. He's nice. He was so nice. I was happy. I thought, if these young dolly birds can do it, this old lady can do it!

“I'd like to thank you for the kisses.

While it is certainly unusual to kiss a monarch, this is actually not the first time that Prince Charles has been allowed to do so during an engagement: shortly after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth, in September 2022, the new King greeted a crowd of well-wishers outside Buckingham Palace to pay their respects in this video released by CNN shows a well-wisher named Jenny Assiminios speaking briefly to Prince Charles before kissing him on the cheek. I saw him right in front of me. I couldn't believe it, so I said to him, 'Can I kiss you?' I said. He said, 'Yes, you can,' so I grabbed him and I was so happy.” She later told CNN, “Thank you, God, for letting me see him and kiss him.

The official Royal Family website states that there is “no mandatory code of conduct” for meeting the King or Queen, but the public and the Royal Family themselves usually “wish to observe the traditional formality,” with a bow from the head for men and a small bow for women. bow.

When Charles was kissed earlier this week, he “shook hands with Kathleen and took it in stride with a wry smile,” reported Natasha Livingstone of the Daily Mail, adding, “For a 75-year-old undergoing cancer treatment, it is an encouraging sign that he is on the mend. For a 75-year-old undergoing cancer treatment, it's an encouraging sign that he's on the road to recovery.

Livingston correctly noted, however, that “such an intimate act might have provoked a very different reaction in the late queen's reign.” Royal biographers such as Andrew Morton have noted that Her late Majesty “would never” have allowed a kiss to be given to a civilian, and that the queen had “a different kind of style” than her son, which Livingstone calls “an informal formality,” and “an enthusiastic willingness to Reflecting “his sober approach to receiving,” she wrote Is this also the case with the new edict that “you may kiss the king?”