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A collection of Queen Elizabeth II's snappiest comebacks has gone viral on social media after being uploaded to the video-sharing platform TikTok.
The footage, uploaded by user british.royalty and captioned "she's so amusing," has gained over 1.4 million views and 300,000 likes since it was posted, with commenters praising the monarch's sense of humor.
A number of clips included in the viral TikTok resurfaced online this year during the celebrations for the 96-year-old queen's historic Platinum Jubilee, marking her 70th year on the British throne.
In the opening shot, the queen is shown cutting a cake with a sword during a charity lunch event in 2021. The event was hosted at the Eden Project in Cornwall, where the queen, along with Prince Charles, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and William and Kate, was visiting to attend a meeting of G7 leaders.
The monarch was loaned the sword by the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall, who accompanies members of the royal family when they are on official engagements in the county. When seen to struggle somewhat with the sword, an organizer told the queen there was a knife nearby to which her response was: "I know there is. This is something that is more unusual."
In another cake-related clip, the queen is shown during a special event at Sandringham House in February, on the day marked each year that she ascended to the throne.
When told by a member of staff that the message on the cake she was presented with had to be placed upside down so that the press could see it, the queen responded by saying with a smile: "Oh, so they can see it? I don't matter!"
Her dry sense of humor has won praise from social media users with many also commenting on the rare opportunities there are to see the queen speaking freely.
"Love that she has a sense of humor," wrote one user.
"I forget that she speaks sometimes," said another.
One clip included in the video that surprised some commenters showed the queen telling a former prime minister that he was expendable and then laughing.
This comes from a longer exchange, recorded in 1992 as part of a documentary following the queen at a G7 meeting at Buckingham Palace.
In the video, the queen is shown speaking to former U.K. prime minister Edward Heath and then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III about the Middle East. When the monarch tells Heath that Baker "couldn't go to Baghdad like you did," he responded by saying "why not ma'am? I went to Baghdad?"
"Well, I know you did!" the queen is shown to reply, "but you're expendable now."
"Imagine the queen telling you you're expendable," one TikTok user responded to the clip.
"LITERALLY A QUEEN" wrote another.
A number of royal-related videos have been uploaded to TikTok this year that have gone viral, increasingly featuring the queen and Princess Diana.
Data published by Statista in 2021 showed that the app had a 50.3% reach in the U.S. with in excess of 78 million users. Of this number, 47.4 percent of users were under the age of 30, with 25 percent aged between 10 and 19.
The queen remains a popular figure in the U.S., topping the list of living royals in terms of favorability, but still coming one place behind Princess Diana, who is the most popular royal overall despite having died 25 years ago.
About the writer
James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more