One Small Blunder Landed Duchess Sophie A Serious Side-Eye From Queen Elizabeth

Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, has arguably been one of the most dependable members of the British royal family since she married Prince Edward in 1999. Despite all of Edward's siblings filing for divorce in short succession in the early '90s, his and Sophie's marriage has remained strong. It's no wonder Queen Elizabeth II was fond of her no-drama daughter-in-law, but their relationship wasn't exactly smooth sailing from the start. Sophie got her fair share of stink eye from the monarch during the early days of her marriage to Edward.

While many who married into the royal family found the press to be the most burdensome aspect of their new life, Sophie was fighting a battle with seating charts. In the 2013 ITV documentary "Our Queen," she recalled how nervewracking it was finding her seat at events because she had such a hard time locating it in the Buckingham Palace ballroom. She oftentimes embarrassingly ended up in the wrong chair. Not just that, but finding her seat sometimes took way longer than it should, and she once found herself still trying to find her spot when the queen was readying to make a speech. "But I shan't forget the look that I got when I couldn't find my chair and [the Queen] was looking to do her speech," she recalled, per Hello!

Secretly, however, the queen was rather fond of Sophie. In his 2025 book, "Sophie: Saving the Royal Family," Sean Smith revealed that the monarch's first observation of the duchess was, "you wouldn't notice her in the crowd" (via Daily Mail). This was not the insult one would think. "It was greatly to Sophie's advantage to maintain a low profile," Smith penned, explaining that Her Majesty was likely fed up with Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson's tabloid drama at the time.

Queen Elizabeth II's relationship with Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, became one of the monarch's most special bonds during her lifetime. "With the exception of her daughter Anne, the queen was closer to Sophie than any of the other royal women," royal expert Ingrid Seward told OK! in 2025. "It really was a genuine closeness, and Elizabeth was always Sophie's biggest confidante." Seward suggested Sophie was like a daughter to the queen, and this bond was on display early in Sophie's royal tenure, when she made a royally big bugger up.

Of all the tragedies Sophie has weathered in her life, getting punked by a fake sheikh (who was News Of The World's investigations editor Mazher Mahmood in disguise) was probably one of the worst. While pretending to be interested in hiring her PR firm to represent a Saudi prince, Mahmood managed to get Sophie on record speaking poorly of prominent British politicians (the royal family is supposed to stay politically neutral) and gossiping about members of the royal family. This was an instance where a royal broke a rule and things got dramatic very fast. The headlines were brutal, but amid the media tempest, the queen defended Sophie, breaking the royals' age-old rule of "never complain, never explain."

"The queen deplores the entrapment, subterfuge, innuendo and untruths to which the Earl and Countess have been subjected in recent days," her statement read, per News24. In an additional statement, Buckingham Palace criticized the Daily Mail for apparently misattributing the quotes from Sophie published in their expose. News24 noted the queen was siding against the media. Indeed, she protected Sophie in a way she often didn't protect other members of the family who found themselves in the middle of a scandal.