Barack and Michelle Obama welcome Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip for a mutual dinner at Winfield House in London, 2011. Photo: Charles Dharapak/AP “You could really see he looked a little worried,” recalled Max Foster, CNN’s royal correspondent. But if the Obamas displayed a typically American hesitancy about royal protocol, they also shared that equally typically American sentiment of having a huge love for the queen. According to Foster, Obama later told the US ambassador that his visits to Britain were among his favorite trips abroad. More indicative of the closeness between the Queen and the Obamas was a moment that came the following year after the state dinner, when the then US president and first lady returned to Buckingham Palace for a G20 reception. To the surprise of the press, Michelle Obama put a friendly arm around the Queen, who warmly returned the gesture. The Daily Mail groaned and described the moment as “electrifying”. Few countries are as obsessed with celebrity as the US, and royalty is the ultimate celebrity, being exotically unattainable and – unlike most other celebrities – incredibly silent. Even the most arrogant stand in awe of her. When then-President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, made their official visit in 2019, he may not have understood royal protocol, occasionally walking in front of the Queen during a parade, but he was still uncharacteristically respectful of her presence. He later told American reporters that the Queen hadn’t had “as much fun in 25 years” as she had with him. Buckingham Palace declined to comment. Perhaps it was because Trump was so amused that the palace wouldn’t let him stay there during his visit, even though it had hosted the Obamas and the Bushes. It was a sign of how much the usually super-noble Trump respects the Queen that she didn’t take it lightly. It was also a sign of how much Americans respect the Queen that they eagerly looked for silent messages from her expressing her mockery of their divisive president: was she trolling him by giving away a book? Were there messages in her tiaras? Just as the British looked for hidden meaning in her jewelry during the EU referendum, Americans saw in the Queen a silent source of wisdom. The chaos surrounding Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex’s move to California has elevated the Queen in the eyes of many: Harry and Meghan have become reality TV, but the Queen is a blockbuster saga. U.S. royal correspondents agreed that when it came to the British royal family—which, frankly, is the only royal family Americans have ever cared about—the ones Americans tuned in to were Princes William and Harry, the Princess Diana, Duchess of Cambridge and the Queen. The Princes and Duchess of Cambridge are the most famous of the royals: they look like the kind of glossy pin-ups that American teenagers rave about and have been treated accordingly, attracting fans and screaming paparazzi. The Queen, by contrast, was respectfully charmed. She was popular from the start of her reign – America’s Time magazine named her ‘woman of the year’ in 1952 – and was largely spared the criticism she suffered in the UK after Diana’s death. Queen Elizabeth II meets animal lovers outside the White House with George W Bush, 2007. Photo: Anwar Hussein/WireImage via Getty Images Instead, US audiences consistently saw her as a combination of a noble politician, a character from an ancient fairy tale, and a mother. Even the scandal surrounding Prince Andrew didn’t hurt her image abroad, and no one ever suggested that it might have been the king who allegedly made racist comments to Meghan. US coverage of the 2012 Diamond Jubilee was notable for its ubiquity and reverence. “Americans were very reverent of the queen,” Foster said. “With William and Kate they want to know about their everyday lives, but with the Queen they’ve always been fascinated with her as an icon.” It was the Queen’s parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, who set the stage for the American public’s relationship with her when they made the first visit to the US by a British monarch in June 1939 at the invitation of President Roosevelt, shortly before the outbreak of war. The visit was a huge – and somewhat surprising – PR coup for the palace, and thawed Anglo-American relations. It also established the royal family in the American mind as a shining, benign force, one beyond politics but important in terms of diplomacy. As one news commentator noted during the visit, the last time the British had visited, it was “to burn down the White House”. Politicians loved taking pictures with QueenLauren Collins, The New Yorker Lauren Collins, Europe writer for the New Yorker, said: “Americans are interested in the Queen for the same reason the British are interested in Las Vegas: it looks wonderfully exotic. Besides, it offers Americans a gateway to a grandly imagined past.” Ronald Reagan laughs after a joke made by Queen Elizabeth II, who commented on the bad California weather she had experienced since arriving in the US in 1983. Photo: Bettmann/Corbis It also served as a unifying force for American politicians. “Politicians loved being photographed with the queen,” Foster said, “and the American public loved seeing her in photos with all the presidents. He connected them. The only other person who had such an international presence for them was Nelson Mandela.” She was comfortable with it all, even managing to look more glamorous than Jackie Kennedy during the Kennedys’ visit to the UK in 1961. Well, almost everything: welcoming her on a 2007 visit to the US, George W. Bush was his usual self who looked like Bush. “You’ve had dinner with 10 US presidents,” he said. “You helped this country celebrate its 200 years in 1976-17.” And how did the Queen react to aging by two centuries? According to Bush: “She gave me a look that only a mother could give a child.”
