When you’re Queen Elizabeth and you have to pull off some James Bond shit without blowing your little-old-lady cover, you use your handbag.
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The queen has revealed in the past that she always keeps a mirror, lipstick, a pen, some mint lozenges and reading glasses in her purse, and on Sundays, she includes a few small bills, “precisely folded” to donate to her church. That’s adorable! It’s just like any sweet grandma’s purse. Only now we know the truth. The queen’s purse is actually her secret communication tool to talk to her security guards when she’s out in public.
The royal historian, Hugo Vickers, gave the scoop to People magazine.
“It would be very worrying if you were talking to the Queen and saw the handbag move from one hand to the other,” Vickers said. That’s the signal the Queen uses to tell her staff she’s over her current conversation and wants them to come break it off. They would, at least, be discreet about it.
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“It would be done very nicely,” Vickers said. “Someone would come along and say, ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury would very much like to meet you.'”
That’s not the only way the queen uses her purse to send signals, though. The Telegraph reported that if she sets her handbag on the table during dinner, it’s telling her security that she wants the event to end within five minutes. And if she sets it on the floor, she’s having a crap conversation and she wants her lady-in-waiting to rescue her.
And obviously, the queen has a secret signal that means “send in security and rescue me immediately,” which, TBH, all of us could use at every bar and party ever. That’s if she spins her rings on her fingers, which honestly I would forget about and do in about two seconds just because I’m fidgety, so good on the queen for having that kind of restraint.
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