Becoming a member of the Royal Family means adopting a kind of formality that would seem pretty strange to most of the public.
Meghan is even reported to have been forced to change the way she ate upon her marriage to Prince Harry.
Before Meghan married Prince Harry, she was no stranger to living life in the public eye as a successful actress and philanthropist.
However, she little expected the amount of arcane rules and customs she would have to adopt as her new normal once she officially became a member of the Royal Family.
From learning how to properly curtsey, to memorising the lyrics to the UK’s national anthem and new rules for her wardrobe on public engagements –
there was said to be a wealth of new etiquette Meghan was expected to quickly get to grips with as a royal.
This is even reported to have extended to the way that Meghan was expected to tuck into her breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with a strict protocol surrounding meal times imposed on her that was the ‘proper’ way of using her cutlery now she had become a formal representative of the monarchy as the Duchess of Sussex.
It turns out that using your cutlery isn’t as simple as you might have expected, and Meghan – alongside the rest of us – simply are not using our knives, forks, and spoons in a manner that’s up to scratch for the royals and aristocracy. Reportedly, the new Duchess of Sussex as she joined the Royal Family was given a crash course in the proper etiquette of cutlery usage.
According to Debrett’s website – who is the “authority on modern manners” – a fork should never be used to scoop up food, and instead, you should be using your knife to push food onto the back of it, where you can eat it from, but turning it over and scooping is a big no-no.
Your knife should be held in the palm of your hand and secured by your index finger and thumb and under no circumstances should it ever be eaten from – or, it goes without saying, licked. Instead, you should only ever be eating from your fork or spoon, and when it comes to pasta dishes you should only be using your fork. Equally, it’s apparently impolite to ask your host for a steak knife if you’re round at their home for dinner – because it implies that they’ve overcooked their meat and it’s too tough, however if you’re dining in a restaurant, it’s acceptable to ask your waiter for one.
Meghan opened up in the six-part documentary series she and Harry made with Netflix about some of her initial struggles with adapting to the strict protocol that surrounds royal life, saying: “We were in the car and we were going to Royal Lodge for lunch, and he’s like ‘Oh, my grandmother’s here, we’re going to meet her after church.’ And I remember we were in the car driving up and he’s like ‘You know how to curtsy, right?’ And I just thought it was a joke.”
Harry chimed in, noting that it was a pretty unusual requirement of a first meet-up with your future grandmother-in-law: “How do you explain that to people? How do you explain that you bow to your grandmother? And that you will need to curtsy. Especially to an American. That’s weird.”
Follow us to see more useful information, as well as to give us more motivation to update more useful information for you.
Source: USA Today
