Queen Elizabeth has staff break her shoes in before use to prevent her getting blisters.
The Queen asks her employees to walk around Buckingham Palace in any new footwear she’s acquired, in order to ensure the shoes are “immediately comfortable” when she starts wearing them.
Speaking to Woman & Home, royal courtier Stewart Parvin said: “The shoes have to be immediately comfortable. The Queen can never say, ‘I’m uncomfortable, I can’t walk anymore.’”
The monarch’s personal designer Angela Kelly has admitted to being one of the “flunkies” who break the shoes in, as they both share the same shoe size.
Speaking to HELLO! magazine, she said: “The Queen has very little time to herself and not time to wear in her own shoes, and as we share the same shoe size it makes the most sense this way.”
The 95-year-old royal isn’t renowned for being too experimental with her style of shoe.
She is reported to have worn Anello & Davide slip-ons for all her public engagements over the last 50 years during which time she’s said to have gone through hundreds of pairs. She is also said to have 10 pairs ready to be worn at all times.
Shoes aren’t the only thing that pass through palace staff before getting to her majesty either. It’s generally perceived that her food is always tasted beforehand to ensure nobody’s tried to poison her. However it was recently revealed that additional safety measures are in place to minimise the risk of the monarch, or indeed any other members of the royal family, coming to any harm from being poisoned.
Speaking in Channel 5’s ‘Secrets of the Royal Kitchens’, royal correspondent Emily Andrews, explained that the Queen’s meal is always chosen at random, meaning that if somebody wanted to poison her they’d have to do so to every meal being served.
She said: “After everything is plated up, a page chooses at random one of the plates to be served to Her Majesty. So if anyone did want to poison the monarch they’d have to poison the whole lot.”