If you’re ever talking to Queen Elizabeth and she twists her wedding ring — watch out: she’s just not that into you and looking to escape.
Being the Queen has its advantages, but one of the drawbacks is she has to constantly make small talk with many, many people and often gets stuck in rudderless conversations.
At home in Buckingham Palace, it’s easy — the Queen has a discreet buzzer she presses when she’s ready for her guest to leave. But in public, it’s much more difficult. So she and her aides have come up with subtle and ingenious ways to keep her moving.
A clue that the Queen is done chatting when she’s at a social event is that she’ll move her handbag to her other arm, which will bring over her handlers to take her away, according to People magazine.
“It would be done very nicely,” royal historian Hugo Vickers told the mag. “Someone would come along and say, ‘Sir, the Archbishop of Canterbury would very much like to meet you.’”
But the red alert for staff is if the Queen starts spinning her wedding ring, which tells her crew that she wants to get moving immediately. Putting her bag on the floor sends the same message.
Prince Philip and Prince Charles also have their tells. The Queen’s husband uses a sweeping motion when he’s meeting a line of people and Prince Charles likes to crack a joke, and make his escape while the person is laughing, according to the magazine.