Have you ever wondered what it’s really like to attend a fancy royal dinner? We certainly have. Yes, it always looks gorgeous in pictures, but we’ve always suspected it would be very prim, very proper and—let’s be honest—a little stuffy. Well, it seems we were very wrong!
Nobody has spilled the beans (yet) on what dinner parties with King Charles are like, but the ones hosted by his late mother,, were apparently pretty spirited. One of the likely reasons? According to those working closest to her, the queen had a very clever (and surprisingly unroyal!) way to keep the conversation going at the table, with many guests revealing more than they’d probably intended to.
So how did the queen get her guests talking so openly? We’ll give you a hint: It’s a trick many of us are probably pretty familiar with too. Read on to see if you guessed right.
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How many events did Queen Elizabeth host in any given month?
Before we get to her slightly naughty party strategy, we should note just how many events Queen Elizabeth both hosted and attended over the course of her 70 years on the throne. She was in charge of a couple regular royal events every year, including four royal garden parties in the summer, as well as state banquets and a handful of palace receptions. While it’s hard to pinpoint exact numbers for all her soirees, we know that she welcomed guests to more than 150 state dinners in total during her reign.
When it came to attending events, those numbers balloon quickly. For example, her schedule peaked in 2016 with 332 engagements—yes, just in that one year! After that, the numbers went down due to both the pandemic and her advancing age. In 2022, her final , she went to roughly 120 events.
