It turns out that, despite being the monarch of millions of people (and one of the battle-scarred claimants of The Iron Throne), Elizabeth Windsor, queen of England, is just like the rest of us. That is, on her downtime from waving practice and toning up the stiffness of her firm upper lip, she apparently likes to relax in front of the TV, watching like an eagle-eyed, fancy-hatted hawk for dumb mistakes from the show’s production staff. The Queen’s subject of choice—not wholly surprising, given the above average number of scepters she interacts with in her day-to-day life—is Downton Abbey, a show that for many people offers a glimpse of unattainable opulence, but for Elizabeth is presumably the equivalent of Everybody Loves Raymond.
According to biographer Brian Hoey, who recently talked to People about his new book At Home With The Queen, the monarch takes great pleasure in searching for errors in the six-season British soap. “She loves to point out mistakes,” Hoey said, referring to the 89-year-old mother of four and Better Homes And Impractically Large Palaces subscriber.
Sadly for the Queen’s royal schadenfreude, the Downton staff is apparently pretty good at avoiding goofs, presumably thanks to the ever-looming threat of the Tower of London hanging in their minds. Still, Hoey does recount a hilarious incident when the show featured “a young, so-called British officer wearing medals which had not been awarded when he was supposed to be alive. He was fighting in the First World War and the medals on his chest did not come in until the Second World War.” The Queen, a regular hander-outer of medals, quickly noticed the flub, and a good laugh was had by all. (At press time, we have no information on the whereabouts of the young actor in question, although Downton Abbey showrunner Julian Fellowes is apparently still alive.)