It’s not that easy having to do with toilets for a royal
If you think Royal life also involves luxury toilets, you’re wrong because you’re forgetting all the rules they have to follow when it comes to going to the bathroom: before, during, and after.
For instance, the late Queen Elizabeth II had specific requirements and guidelines for her bathing practice. At 7:30 a.m., Queen Elizabeth’s maid would draw her a bath after waking up, and while she waited for the water to fill the tub, the queen would sip an Earl Grey tea and listen to BBC Radio 4.
According to this article, the queen’s bath would always be filled with “tepid” water, and the maid would stop the water after precisely seven inches are poured, no matter which palace she was living in at the time: Balmoral, Windsor, Sandringham, or Buckingham Palace. Only after the maid had double-checked the water’s temperature with a “wooden-cased thermometer” to ensure the ideal bathing temperature would the queen enter the tub.
The queen would have “fixed her hair” and put on the clothes “laid out for her” by about 8:30 a.m. before sitting down to breakfast. Instead, when it came to going to the lavatory during a function or supper, royals must make a point of excusing the wait staff and adjusting their silverware to show that they are still eating.
A royal must merely say “Excuse me” and then quietly leave the table before they can “announce their intentions”. If they have not yet finished eating, they must cross their fork and knife on their plate before going to the closest bathroom. The silverware can be left “at an angle, with the handles at the bottom right of the plate” once they have finished their meal.
There are 78 bathrooms in Buckingham Palace alone, according to the royal website, and housekeeping staff is not permitted to use vacuums to keep the floor clean. The household is forbidden from using vacuums, therefore maids and other domestic staff are required to “sweep the floors and carpets”. Such appliance is forbidden in the royal halls due to the annoying noise it emits, as was revealed in the documentary “Royal Servants”. The program reported, “cleaners sweep carpets lest royal ears are offended by vacuum cleaners”. A servant who is neither seen nor heard is the best servant.
Another important factor in the royal family is language. The members of the firm are consistently poised, intelligent, and never rude. The linguistic rules, however, are so strict that they even apply to words we wouldn’t have thought of ourselves. For example, one of the requirements mentions the vocabulary used to describe bathrooms. The term “toilet” was not considered proper for polite conversation by the late Queen Elizabeth II. The phrase “lavatory” or the British slang term “the loo” were acceptable substitutes. This rule isn’t likely to change even though the queen is no longer among us.
The word “toilet” is reportedly prohibited from usage in royal discourse since it is “frowned upon in royal circles” and originates from the French language.
Queen Elizabeth II, as said, had very strict bathing rules, whereas Princess Margaret, the sister of the queen, and other royals preferred a bath to a standing shower, viewing showering as a practice for the ordinary person. Craig Brown, a royal specialist, went on to elaborate on the peculiar bathing law and viewpoint.
Tina Brown describes how King Charles has requirements for his toilet seat, the type of toilet paper he uses, and what must be with him when he travels in her book “The Palace Papers”.
Michael Fawcett, a former aide to Charles, disclosed to Brown that the king has specific requirements for bathroom “paraphernalia”, including his own “lavatory seat” (which he must carry with him when he travels) and “Kleenex Velvet lavatory paper”. The king traveled with a truckload of personal items, even when staying at a friend’s house in the countryside, including the necessities for the bathroom.
According to UK research, men in particular spend about seven hours a year using the restroom, and 84% of those polled acknowledged using social media while using the restroom. However, you can’t follow such conventional bathroom habits if you’re a member of the royal family. According to House Beautiful, using a phone, newspaper, or magazine while seated on a porcelain throne is regarded as “unhygienic”, and is therefore not allowed in the royal bathrooms.
Such peculiar rules go beyond what is written in books. In royal baths, candles are not commonplace, and neither are items like diffusers (and if there is one, it should be hidden when guests are over). When guests are at the royal residence, there must be a tidy stack of white hand towels available for them to use, and the toilet paper dispenser must be set up such that it comes out from the over position rather than the under position.
Talking about food, Darren McGrady, a former palace chef, claims that several fine dining staples are off-limits to the royals because they are judged to be too “risky”. For example, shellfish and foie gras are among these foods.
Grant Harrold, a former royal butler who is now an etiquette consultant, clarified that avoiding shellfish has to do with time and possible stomachaches while at work (which would likely result in a royal yelling, “Where’s the toilet?” without giving much regard to the language being used).
Given that she completed her final year of school in the UK, Myka Meier, a royal etiquette expert, told something about the entertaining and bathroom customs of the royals explaining why a duchess like Catherine Middleton would never keep a pump bottle of soap in the bathroom, as royals prefer bar soap to liquid.
“The duchess will also probably have lightly scented soap and paired hand cream”, Meier explained. “Many upper-class British homes prefer bar soap to liquid, so the duchess may use that in her private quarters”.
King Charles III was reared in a palace, thus he is well-versed in royal life, however, parts of his hygiene routines still seem to be stuck in his early years. The now-king has very strict bathroom rules, according to Paul Burrell, a former butler to Diana Spencer.
The bath plug needs to be in a specific location, and the water temperature needs to be the ideal level of “tepid”, which normally has 98°F as the highest threshold when it comes to the king’s daily bath.
“[King Charles III] has his valets squeeze one inch of toothpaste onto his toothbrush every morning”, the former butler said. Yet another expert, royal biographer Anthony Holden, provided additional insight on the royal’s means of getting dressed, saying, “Charles, for all his attempts to find out how the other half lives and interest in the less fortunate in society, for all that, he has two men, paid for by the state, to help him get dressed in the morning”.
