A woman who tried living like Queen Elizabeth II for a week has been left very unimpressed by the monarch’s lifestyle, and is now convinced being a full-time royal is not for her.
Eliza Thompson, 30, a senior entertainment editor at Cosmopolitan.com, took up the challenge of mimicking the sovereign’s daily activities as part of an assignment. ‘I was assigned the project after making a bunch of jokes about how I’d like to christen a ship in my name,’ she told the DailyMail.com.
Over the course of seven days, Eliza dressed like the queen, had her portrait taken, sipped on gin and Dubonnet, Her Majesty’s signature drink, outfitted herself with some Corgis, rode a horse and studied the Constitution as part of her efforts to immerse herself in the queen’s universe.
Not for her: Eliza Thompson (left), a senior entertainment editor at Cosmopolitan.com, tried living like Queen Elizabeth II for a week and did not enjoy the experience
So regal: Eliza donned ‘a deep red curtain worn as a cape’ and ‘a blue bedsheet draped over my legs like a dress’ while posing for her official portrait
Posing for an official portrait was Eliza’s first order of business as she started her royal life. She studied similar paintings on Pinterest for inspiration, but despite her research, ‘derailed the activity with [her] distinct lack of royal poise’ almost instantly.
Eliza used a portrait of the queen painted by the Italian artist Pietro Annigoni as her model, and worked on producing a DYI version of the regal image.
‘The winning combination was a deep red curtain worn as a cape, a blue bedsheet draped over my legs like a dress, some plastic gold chains, and a faux-fur collar of mysterious origin,’ she wrote.
After an hour and a half of posing, Eliza was left ‘bored, tired, and thirsty’, and while she promised her friend she would buy him a canvas for him to paint the full portrait, she never found time to complete the purchase.
‘It’s hard to be the queen when you have a full-time job and have no assistants to run your errands—but I did buy Jon a beer that night, so I guess that still makes me his patron,’ she wrote.
Finding enough time for royal activities was one of the main struggles Eliza encountered during her experiment, and probably impacted her impressions of how enjoyable the queen’s lifestyle actually is.
Uncanny: As part of her experiment, Eliza (pictured with two Corgi toys) also dressed like the queen and replicated some of the monarch’s photos with similar poses and settings
Mirror, mirror: Eliza successfully posed in her own version of this 1994 photo of the queen walking her dogs at Windsor Castle
‘I didn’t expect to have such a hard time fitting in activities that should have been relaxing, like enjoying a cocktail or an afternoon tea,’ she told the DailyMail.com.
Cocktail drinking was one of two tasks Eliza assigned herself on the second day of her assignment. She sipped on a gin and Dubonnet, which is believed to be the queen’s favorite drink, but strongly dislike the fortified-wine-based beverage.
‘It was, in a word, disgusting. I’ve never liked gin, and the only word I can think of to describe the taste of Dubonnet is “medicinal”,’ she wrote. ‘I drank about half of it and threw the rest in the sink.’
Looking back on her experiment, she deemed the drinking part to be most arduous and said: ‘Drinking gin and Dubonnet was definitely the hardest activity, because Dubonnet is disgusting.’
Drinking gin and Dubonnet was definitely the hardest activity, because Dubonnet is disgusting
When it came to procuring Corgis to mimic the monarch’s famous pets, Eliza had no chance securing live animals, but her photo team sent her two stuffed toys, whom she nicknamed Cersei and Jaime, after the Game Of Thrones characters of the House Lannister.
She took them outside for a photo session as part of her week-long effort to recreate some of the monarch’s photos with similar poses and settings.
‘The outfits were all thanks to Lauren Adhav, our assistant style and beauty editor,’ she said. ‘She went all over New York in search of the perfect royal ensembles. While I don’t wear a lot of colors in real life, I do like that she has a kind of daily uniform with her matching coats and hats.’
Day Four of Eliza’s royal experiment included a horseback riding lesson as a nod to Her Majesty’s lifelong love of the activity. She enjoyed it much more than her attempts to guzzle gin and Dubonnet, and declared she would happily try it again.
On the sixth day of her sovereign-inspired life, Eliza went to see a photography exhibit in New York City, since the queen, according to Buckingham Palace, is a keen photographer.
Accessories: When it came to procuring Corgis to mimic the monarch’s famous pets, Eliza had no chance securing live animals, but her photo team sent her two stuffed toys
Opting out: Eliza is now certain she would probably not enjoy joining the royal family full time, and told the DailyMail.com: ‘I don’t think I would enjoy being a real royal, no’
As luck would have it, she ended up admiring photos by the British artist David Hockney, who in 2012 received the Order Of Merit from Her Majesty herself.
For her last day as a part-time monarch, Eliza had planned to go to the racetrack, but due to snowy weather, canceled the outing and instead studied the Constitution, inspired by Queen Elizabeth II’s portrayal on the Netflix show The Crown.
‘I managed to do this for about a half hour before my eyes glazed over from boredom, although I did retain a few facts,’ she wrote.
Later on, some of her friends came to her home, and the group ended up drinking, of course, gin and Dubonnet, ‘just because it was there’ and because their mulled wine turned out to be ‘actually kind of gross’.
‘The biggest lesson is that it’s hard to be a ceremonial figurehead when you have to go to work every day, but I also learned that I don’t want to be a ceremonial figurehead, even if it means I get to have a pack of Corgis,’ Eliza wrote once the experiment was over.
‘Free time for nature strolling is probably nice if you’re into that, but is it worth having your picture taken by strangers whenever you go outside? I’d say no. But perhaps I’d feel differently if the queen’s lunchtime cocktail was something less gross than gin and Dubonnet.’
Eliza is now certain she would probably not enjoy joining the royal family full time, and told the DailyMail.com: ‘I don’t think I would enjoy being a real royal, no. Too many photographs and too many hats!’