A royal biography has revealed the late Queen Elizabeth's candid first impression of Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, during their first meeting at Windsor Castle. The comment, described as 'someone you wouldn't notice in a crowd', was reportedly meant as a compliment.
First Meeting at Windsor Castle
During the couple's courtship in the late 1990s, Prince Edward brought Sophie to Windsor Castle to meet his mother. Royal author Sean Smith, in his biography titled Sophie, detailed how Edward's valet Brian offered 'anxious' Sophie guidance to avoid common mistakes visitors make when meeting royals for the first time.
Brian told Sophie a 'white lie' that lunch would be in a grand dining room with little one-on-one time with the Queen. Instead, Smith wrote: "The room was tiny and the Queen was certainly not a speck at the other end of the table. The big moment arrived. Edward introduced Sophie to the Queen and the brief handshake and curtsy were over in the blink of an eye: all that practising at home had been worth it."
A Compliment in Disguise
After the meal, Smith compared the experience to a dental appointment: "Never as bad as you think it is going to be and something you feel pleased with yourself for having done." Sophie then joined the Queen informally with Princess Beatrice and Eugenie, and "for the first time she chatted politely, if a little stiffly, with Edward's mother. The ice was broken."
Following the meeting, someone reportedly overheard the Queen describing Sophie as "someone you wouldn't notice in a crowd". While this might sound critical, Smith explained it was a compliment, as recent additions to the royal family at the time - Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson - were "tabloid gifts that kept on giving".
Building a Dependable Presence
Smith wrote: "It was greatly to Sophie's advantage to maintain a low profile. She would have to face intense media scrutiny in the future, but for the moment she could quietly establish herself as a dependable presence." In the years that followed, Edward proposed in 1998, and the couple married in 1999 at St George's Chapel in Windsor.
