Queen Elizabeth II is always working and hosting people at Buckingham Palace. Most of those visitors don’t make any waves, and usually there’s not breathless, breaking-news coverage. I mean, the British papers always note that the 92-year-old monarch is just quietly doing her thing all the time. So it was last week, when QEII hosted the king of Jordan, King Abdullah II, at Buckingham Palace. The Queen and Princess Anne hosted King Abdullah, Queen Rania and the (cute) Crown Prince in one of what looked like one of the smaller reception rooms in the palace. Handshakes and curtsies were exchanged. The royals posed for photos and those photos were released via the palace’s communications office.
As soon as the photos came online, people were like “damn, what’s going on with the Queen’s hand?” Look closely – one of Queen Liz’s hands seems to be severely bruised. That doesn’t look like it’s from shaking hands, and it didn’t look like it was a recent injury, like something that just happened that day. That bruise is several days old. So what happened? The palace has issued no statements officially or unofficially. Right now, it’s just a murmur. It could be that it was just a simple accident – QEII is 92 years old and older people do tend to bruise quite easily. It could have been a fall or a stumble or maybe a corgi tugged too hard on a leash. But some people are worried that it’s something much more serious. I don’t know. Just keep your eye on it.
Today The Queen, with The Princess Royal, hosted Their Majesties The King and Queen of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, @KingAbdullahII and @QueenRania, and their son The Crown Prince at Buckingham Palace. pic.twitter.com/jMjdm5na8h
— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) February 28, 2019
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
Her husband ran over it.
Hahahahahahahahahaha!
See…this is why I LOVE HM….yes I know RE: Panama Papers and BP in disrepair ie: more of the money game etc….however HM puts duty first, vanity is not and never will be part of her MO…and in this case HM could have worn gloves but didn’t.
Love her? Ask her to explain the Palace Letters the subject of ongoing litigation between an Australian academic and the National Archives in Australia. There’s a very, very high level of certainty HM and Charles knew and encouraged the sacking of Gough Whitlam by the Governor General, months before it happened. This led to Australia’s biggest constitutional crisis. The Palace Letters would reveal exactly how much they knew. Let’s see, Whitlam, one of the most progressive prime ministers Australia ever had, was a Republican (as opposed to a Monarchist), wanted the US/CIA base out of Pine Gap. He wanted to nationalise mining assets (not good stuff for Rio Tinto, of which HM is a major shareholder and probably the biggest private (non-institutional) shareholder).
Can we stop treating this family like celebrities, charming cultural figures, etc? They are freeloaders with a lot of power and without accountability to the public. They are not harmless.
The final straw which ousted Whitlam was that he couldn’t control the economy, it was running rampant and he wanted to just start printing money to cover the deficit.
However let no one tell you that the Queen is just a figure head with no power. Her Governor General basically dissolved the government of Australia and replaced the elected PM with the opposition leader. The Governor General is her representative and could not do anything so radical in her name unless she agreed, they can fudge it all they like but of course the buck stopped with her in that fiasco.
I so agree and I wonder what they talked about? What does a non-governing merely representative head of state talk about with an authoritarian (dictatorian) king (and queen) who literally own major stakes in businesses in their own country (Morocco)? Surely they didn’t just do small talk?
We’ll never really know the extent of BRF corruption, however saddest aspect is HM was born into it.
Balloon, you really got me thinking, thanks for this, part and parcel of our willingness to suspend judgment when it comes to famous people too often at our peril…people are people whether they wear a crown or not…
I love Queen Elizabeth and Queen Rania and if we got just add Queen Letizia, the ultimate triple Queens.
Elder people tend to bruise very easily so I hope she is fine.
That can happen easily when blood is drawn or an IV placed, especially in older people. I hope it was just something routine like that.:(
Agreed. It looks like blood stick bruises to me, especially if she’s on a blood thinner.
I agree. I immediately when with IV. Either to draw blood or give fluids (for dehydration for i.e)
She’s probably on a regiment of low dose aspirin for heart health and to keep blood thin enough to keep moving smoothly through (81mg every day/every other day) and that’s it. That, and thinning skin, will cause you to “bruise” at the slightest touch. Happens to my 91 year old dad all the time. It doesn’t “hurt” like a bruise though.
She’s usually wearing gloves, so we haven’t seen it before. She probably has them on her arms, too. And remember that “brusie” on her leg a year or two ago that everyone was so worried about? That was probably this, too.
These days, preventative low-dose aspirin isn’t recommended as often as it used to be. Many doctors are telling patients to stop taking it unless they have had a serious heart incident. People should check with their doctors before starting or stopping low-dose aspirin.
My grandfather’s hands looked like this when he was in his 90’s. He said it was from his medication and my mom confirmed that was what the doctor has told them.
Yeah, Plavix does this, too.
Blood thinners …….she looks in good health to us and is very active but no one really knows the state of her health and what medication she may be on, a huge percentage of 90 + plus people take warfarin or a similar blood thinner such as clopidagrel, which makes any small knock produce a bruise , she could have just banged her hand walking through a door or getting out of the shower, no ‘accident’ in the normal sense of the word would be required to produce a bruise like that in a 92year old.
Yeah. I’m about thirty years younger and this happens to me. It doesn’t take much at all–a slight accidental whack against the wall or something–and there’s a massive bruise. Thin skin, little subcutaneous fat, and there you are.
I’m thinking she’s on a blood thinner. My parents get horrible bruises easily from being on blood thinners.
I don’t love King Abdullah or Queen Rania as the King is an absolute monarch. While Jordan likes to position itself as a constitutional monarchy, the King has the power to dissolve parliament and rule by decree.
Glad you highlighted that.
Well, it’s actually considered a semi-absolute monarchy these days. During the Arab Spring the current King of Jordan allowed protests (unlike most Arab leaders) and he made some concessions. He signed a new constitution into place and gave parliament more powers. He has also indicated that he wants to make Jordan a fully constitutional monarchy, however there are some issues at play.
For starters, the main population of Jordan is made up of those from the East Bank (ruled by tribes which from which are drawn Jordan’s military and political elite) and those from the West Bank (more than half of Jordanians are of Palestinian origin). The East Bank Jordanians form the spine of the King’s support base. The king is from the Hashemite dynasty. They are directly descended from Mohammed and they were the traditional caretakers of Mecca. The support of the East Bank Jordanian tribes is quite transactional in that they support the Royal Court in exchange for protecting their privileges and limiting the power of the Palestinians. So, there are problems when that is seen as not being done. You have Palestinian immigrants (and refugees) developing business in Jordan whilst a bloated government is dominated by East Bank Jordanians who then become unhappy that Palestinian Jordanians are building wealth. It’s all very complicated.
The king has actually been trying to convince his traditional support base to allow for greater, more proportional representation of Palestinians in government including parliament – trying to explain the importance of representative democracy. He has been vocal about pushing Jordanians to build political parties that would advance ideas from across a broad ideological spectrum instead of functioning as patronage mills. He says he wants to establish a mature political culture in Jordan. Let’s not forget that his Queen is of Palestinian extraction.
The big BUT for him and for Jordan is that the king is extremely weary of allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to gain any kind of significant control. Consider that Jordan borders Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia and it has been severely impacted by what has happened in Syria and Iraq and is cautious of Saudi influence in terms of Wahabbism. No one wants the chaos to spread to Jordan. The Muslim Brotherhood controls the Islamic Action Front in Jordan – an extremely powerful and formidable political organisation. They are extremely conservative, to say the least. Let’s just say, human rights in Jordan would not be improved if they gained control. The King doesn’t want this group to hijack political reform in Jordan as they have elsewhere in the Arab world. He wants to cede some of his power to the people – but only the “right” people, which in that part of the world is a complicated issue. Things aren’t as easy as they might seem.
It’s far from perfect and the king is not always right or good; but I completely understand his hesitation. Jordan is a relatively open, free, liberal country for the region. Women have a lot more rights there than in most countries in the region. They are trying to build business and encourage entrepreneurs. They don’t want to be overtaken by religious zealots.
SK, thank you for that incredibly informative comment!
@MB – my pleasure! I lived in Jordan for a while and interviewed a lot of politicians and leading business people – including the then Chief of the Royal Court (an amazing man).
She, like Dumbledore before her, tried on the Horcrux Ring / Resurrection Stone, forgetting that it’s cursed
Yep, she got lured in by a horcrux and has the curse to show for it.
Totally my first thought. Glad I’m not the only one!
I came to the comments section specifically to see if someone else had made this joke. You never let me down.
This comment makes me so happy
That was the first thing I thought of.
Perhaps from a blood draw or an IV? Her people should have known better. They could have easily put her in those elegant gloves she sometimes wears.
That’s what I assumed, too. An IV or blood draw on older people is enough to create bruising like that.
That’s what I thought. An IV gone bad. Those veins are too mobile and fragile for IV when there are better veins for access more proximally. Only a nut would try to get a draw from the dorsal hand veins. They’re just too small for the right gauge needle- a small needle would cause hemolysis and collapse the vein from the vacuum.
right? and If they really wanted to hide it, they would have popped on some gloves
Hmm, maybe she had a canula inserted at some point? That’s what my hand looked like after I got stabbed a million times trying to get one in after my csection.
My elderly grandmother would get IVs in her hands and bruise that way. She was on blood thinners so she would bruise so easily. I wouldn’t be surprised if the queen was also taking medications that can cause bruising.
I’m going with the IV/blood draw theory too, because she’s not trying to hide it. Like NBD.
Agreed. My grandmother would bruise like that when she had IV’s. So it’s either that or she whacked it on a door knob (not that I have ANY experience with that…).
Everyone is on the same page it sounds like-probably IV plus blood thinners=giant bruise. Although Prince Philip in the driveway with a Range Rover is a good Clue guess 😂
Heh heh 😁
Queenie’s got thirty years on me, but I bruise just from air currents!
It does of course look more alarming on older people: one imagines falls and so on.
Gawd bless you, Ma’am! 👑
She’s got 50 years on me, but sometimes people point out bruises on me I have no idea about. Bruising happens, and as someone said above, awesome that HM has no FTG about it.
I bruise very easily, found that upping my Vitamin C helps.
@minx: With me it was the opposite: when I would take Vitamin C I noticed I bruised much more easily and my skin started to become very sensitive; I got a lot of paper cuts and would bleed. Once I stopped the C, this sensitivity all stopped too.
Anony7- I have just the opposite reaction to Vitamin C. My easy bruising stops if I take least 1000 mg per day. The women in my family on my mother’s side got big bruises with no recollection of from whence they came. I started the same pattern as a child. I mean HUGE bruises also. Several inches across sometimes.
Agree with others that it’s probably from
A blood draw or IV, neither of which I think is unusual for someone her age.
She won the thumb war.👍👑
Meghan did it! 🤣😁😂 JUST KIDDING
That’s racist
Yep racism at its finest.
Why even think about Meghan in this situation ?
Contributing to the abuse I see. Putting that idea out there for trolls to mull over and perhaps tabloids to pick up on. If you have nothing nice or unhurtful to say keep it to yourself.
Sick of this. 😒
Gawd, Loislane, there was nothing remotely racist about it. Snowflake was poking fun at the tendency to blame Meghan for every little thing. She wasn’t perpetuating the racist narrative, she was undermining it. Ease up.
Yeah, I kept thinking loislane was going with the flow & being extremely sarcastic, but…. Maybe not?
Thank you, Enny, that’s exactly what I was trying to do. Thank you
I’m pretty sure Snowflake was making a joke about the tabloids blaming Meg for everything.
Right and she probably has a lot of black friends , too.
Chill out Jules and Louisiane. I 100% agree that the abuse of Meghan is out of hand, racist and unfair. I also think that Snowflake was making an ironic joke.
Thanks, i was trying to make a joke about how DM makes up the most awful stories about Meghan. Like the next thing you know, DM will post an article saying Meghan did it.
That’s what the Daily Mail will say!
Lars, I disagree. With that theory, the entire writing team of SNL would be racist, and I think their jabs at racism are fantastic. A joke is a joke.
My grandfather had very thin blood from medication, and when he would get an IV in his hand or arm, the bruising looked very similar to that. His skin was just fragile and the blood apt to seep.
I’ve noticed in a few recent photos of the Queen that she looks like she’s lost weight. It’s subtle, Even in the dress she’s wearing above you can see it slightly as the dress looks a little loose in places. And this all made me wonder: if the Queen should pass before Prince Philip, what becomes of him and his title and place in the royal family? Just curious.
They’ll throw him out on his ear, I’m sure.
LOL!
I’m not an expert and Lord knows I get severely corrected on here frequently…but from what I know studying English royal history, he will still keep his title: Duke of Edinburgh. His official residence will be where the family, royal advisers, and he decides: a private apartment or section at Buckingham Palace, or a private cottage at Balmoral, Windsor Castle or another estate that is appropriate.
He’s already retired to Wood Farm at Sandringham.
He’s the consort, so no possibility of the crown going his way. Prince Charles would ascend the throne, and Philip would still be Prince Philip. He’d just be the father of the monarch instead of the spouse of one.
Is there an equivalent male term for Dowager Queen?
I think his place would remain the same – a retired royal living his remaining life out of the public view.
He keeps his title and stays in his home of Wood Farm at Sandringham. Technically he has no status when the Queen isn’t in the room with him, same as Kate and Meghan have no status when their husbands are gone. For family peace, I expect Charles would still have everyone defer to Philip and accord him the same status they always have as if the Queen was still around.
It must be a bruise because the other hand looks OK. But my mother’s hands were black and blue when she got really old, even without bruising. They were scary.
My mom’s too. She would bruise over the merest bump. It was hard to see that strong woman become so frail. I have started noticing that my knuckles will get that weird blueish tinge when I am reaching between the car seat and console and think here I go too!
Gorgeous queen ! (Of Jordan) and love her whole outfit. and wow cute prince too. He’s single?
She never should have put on Marvolo’s ring.
I have a friend with Reynaud’s disease and that’s what happens to her hands occasionally. Not diagnosis from afar cuz wow. But with her fingers being so red, idk that it’s bruising??
Anne looks fabulous.
Doesn’t she, though? Lovely posture. Reminds me to keep working on mine.
Most likely an IV. Long live the queen!!!
Watching that Jordanian Queen and can’t believe she’s old enough to have birthed that Crown Prince /Man. She looks very good for any age.
I hope Queen Betty doesn’t die soon. Also have this feeling Charles may kick the bucket before Queenie. That William dude is so not ready to be King of any damn thing.
Nah, Charles has two parents who have lived well into their 90s, and he has access to the best medical care around. He’ll hang around quite a bit longer, watch.
Nurse here: those are blood draw bruises. I’ve worked with mostly gero patients so…I’ve seen this a lot. I usually say, “Oh! I see the vampires have been after you!”
That’s exactly what I thought.
I think she finally got sick of her lazy grandsons and backhanded them.
LOL!!!
my mother is in her 80s and she has bruises all over her body, whether they are drawing blood or not. She easily bruised as a younger woman, and it’s considerably worse now. She claims it doesn’t hurt much.
It’s probably from the cross punch she gave Philip when he told her he intended to keep on driving no matter what.
Yep, Philip is such a bad ass…wait, next week he’ll wear a disguise and drive a mini metro around Sandringham. Then when he finally returns, first thing he’ll say to HM “ha! I drove.”
I believe a suitable punishment in such a scenario is forcing Philip to walk around Windsor castle 50 times in the pouring rain while chanting “I’m sorry I drove, I’m sorry I drove, I’m sorry I drove etc….
The British Army can supervise and ensure punishment a success.
Can you imagine if Philip outlives her?!?
This probably isn’t it but her hand reminds me of my grandmother’s foot when it started to get gangrene due to poor blood circulation. She was in a wheelchair at that point living in a nursing home with advanced dementia. The decision was made to amputate the leg right below the knee to prevent it from spreading.
However the Queen is in much better physical and mental shape than my grandmother was at that age. My guess is the IV thing like everyone already said.
Aspirin
I do regular acupuncture and a couple of times, very rarely, I’ve gotten bruises just like that. I think it would be possible if she’s into acupuncture or some sort of iv as said above. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the Queen did acupuncture though? It does help with anxiety, and Phillip alone probably gives her a boatload.
She is definitely into homeopathy, she carries a small medicine case with her when ever she travels. Belladonna for headaches, Aconite for sore throats , Kali Bich for sinus/conjested nose and Nat Mur used for runny nose / itchy eyes , were her staples in the 1990s when I worked for her Homeopath. I think the Kali Bich was for Philip.
My dad hands were like that when he was older. They would bruise really easily just from putting his hand in his pocket
Why do we treat these people like they’re charming cultural figures? They’re freeloaders. Get royals out of the 21 century and beyond.
My nanny lived to 98 and was very well until then but her skin was very thin and she’d bruise at anything. Like her bed sheets could make her skin tear slightly and she’d bleed. Same for bruises. Something that’s a tiny knock for a young person which wouldn’t even hurt or leave a mark would leave a big bruise on my nan. It didn’t hurt her or anything but it would look severe.
Prednisone. Might explain her pudgy-looking face and cheeks too. It makes your skin super thin such that even knocking your hand (or any limb) gently can bruise it. This is how my grandma looked in her last year.
Looks like IV bruises to me. I’ve had them myself.
Is no one else bothered by Reina’s shoes? Are they satin? Are they velvet? Why is she wearing oddly textured bride’s maid shoes??? Is this the future of fashion?
Maybe suede. The latest trend seems to be suede on everything, bags, hats, shoes, jackets, belts and lots of unusual colours.
My sister just bought an emerald green handbag with suede panels and I am eyeing a similar one in deep violet.
The bruised hand looks a little swollen too. My guess is she injured it. Could have been anything. Maybe one of her crazy little great grandchildren slammed her hand in a door. Maybe one her (now unemployed) footmen slammed her hand in a car door. Maybe it was a accident with a wild horse she was riding. Maybe the lid to her red box of papers slammed down on it. So many possibilities!
She still rides horses a lot, perhaps it’s from reins wrapped around her hand?
If HM has bruising across the top of her hands from reins, she’s forgotten how to ride. Reins go between third and fourth finger, across the palm and are gripped by the thumb. Even if she’s riding a horse in a double bit, the second rein loops around the fourth finger and crosses the palm. Never on top of the hand.
No, I’m going to go with a combination of blood thinners/needle sticks and old German.
“Old German”? My autocorrect has a malign sense of humour. Old AGE.
At that age, this can be the result of just the slightest touch, especially if the person might be taking bloodthinners like aspirin.