- During the Order of the Garter Ceremony at Windsor Castle this month, Kate Middleton (opens in new tab) met with Queen Letizia of Spain.
- In video of the encounter, fans noticed that, at one point during Kate and Letizia's conversation, Kate's stepmother-in-law, Camilla Parker Bowles, turns to the women, as if trying to join their conversation.
- Some fans on Twitter felt that Kate ignored Camilla in this moment, thereby snubbing her. A body language weighed in on the ordeal for Express (opens in new tab).
Group dynamics (opens in new tab) are hard. Family dynamics (opens in new tab) are even harder. And royal family (opens in new tab) dynamics? They're at least as hard as regular family dynamics and, on top of that, they're under a constant microscope.
Case-in-point: Kate Middleton (opens in new tab) was recently accused of ignoring her stepmother-in-law, Camilla Parker Bowles (opens in new tab), during the Order of the Garter Ceremony at Windsor Castle earlier this month.
The alleged snub went down when Kate was chatting (opens in new tab) with Queen Letizia of Spain (opens in new tab). Camilla turns around, as if to join the conversation, but then kind of awkwardly stands there as Kate and Letizia (opens in new tab) continue their conversation.
In a now-deleted tweet, one Twitter user wrote, "The video is even more awful bc Camilla try to speak, Kate ignore her (…) and include her in the convo," according to Express (opens in new tab).
Although that tweet has been deleted, the video itself lives on, of course:
Letizia Kate and Camila 👑😍😍😍#DuchessofCambridge #QueenLetizia #DuchessOfCornwall 📷 from fewotherfavorithings on IG pic.twitter.com/D5jvRtFwtaJune 17, 2019
According to Express (opens in new tab), other Twitter users piled on, with one writing, "Uninviting Katie just ignored her," and another adding, "I wouldn't like to think anyone was rude to The Duchess of Cornwall she is always so friendly & welcoming and deserves the utmost Respect!"
The paper tapped body language expert Judi James to settle the issue. Here's what James had to say about the alleged snub:
"I’m sure we’ve all experienced that moment when you try to break into a new group at a social function only to find yourself slightly frozen out because they’re having such a very good time chatting together.
Maybe they didn’t spot you or maybe they were just getting along too well together to allow newcomers to interrupt their stories, and this does look for all the world like what is happening to Camilla here as she tries to break into a very animated chat between Kate and Letizia."
In other words: Kate wasn't actively ignoring Camilla, she was just super engrossed in her conversation with Letizia (opens in new tab).
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Kayleigh Roberts is a freelance writer and editor with more than 10 years of professional experience. Her byline has appeared in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic, Allure, Entertainment Weekly, MTV, Bustle, Refinery29, Girls’ Life Magazine, Just Jared, and Tiger Beat, among other publications. She's a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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