Did The Queen Throw Political Shade With Her Royal Wedding Look?

Let me first assure you that there is not a single monarchist bone in my body. (I audibly cheered when I read Hadley Freeman’s take on the 'tourism' argument this weekend — "'But no tourists would come here if it weren’t for the royal family!' cry royalists, which is an excellent point, given that, say, France has been a barren wasteland since they got rid of their royals," she wrote. "Walk down the Champs Élysées and all you see is tumbleweed where the tourists once were.")

That being said, I have been completely obsessed with decoding the queen’s full-throttle fashion shade since she debuted a suspiciously familiar motif on her hat at the opening of parliament in June 2017. "The award for 'Best Trolling Using a Hat' goes to the #QueensSpeech," tweeted Jane Duke from York, one of the many who noticed that HRH’s blue hat — with its ring of yellow-centered blue flowers — very closely resembled the design of the EU flag. Brexit negotiations had started just two days earlier.

As everyone marveled at the queen’s very bright lime green, purple feathered, and white-gloved wedding look this weekend, I got to wondering what it could all mean. Working on the basis that it might be another flag, the obvious conclusion for a combination of green, purple, and white is, of course, the suffragette flag. A nod, perhaps, to Meghan Markle’s feminism, a position she has spoken about openly and proudly in the past, and is again noted in her shiny new royal bio, with the highlighted quote: "I am proud to be a woman and a feminist." It continues: "Aged 11 [Meghan] successfully campaigned for a company to alter their television advert that had used sexist language to sell washing-up liquid," noting that this, and other early experiences of activism, "helped to shape her lifelong commitment to causes such as social justice and women's empowerment."

But as much as I would love this theory to be true, the queen’s lime green coat and hat are much too bright to be a direct reference to the suffragette flag, which uses a more grass-like green. A little further digging, however, has thrown up a closer, and infinitely more consistent, political match: lime green and purple (surrounded by white) are the colors of 'The People’s Vote' — a campaign for a referendum on the final Brexit deal.

"Whatever your opinion on Brexit, no one would disagree that it's a big deal. And not a done deal," The People’s Vote website reads. "Sign up to support the campaign to ensure that we, the people who will be affected by the Government's Brexit negotiations for generations, have a People's Vote on the final Brexit deal." Could it be that the queen was using this very public occasion to take one more jab at the idea of Great Britain leaving the EU?

Obviously, this is all speculation, but I would be lying if I told you the phrase 'YAAAS QUEEN!' isn't passing through my enduringly European mind.