The Royal Family Just Shared a Vintage Photo of Queen Elizabeth and Jackie Kennedy

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In the 70 days leading up to the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebration weekend, the British royal family's social media channels are sharing a notable image from each of her 70 years on the throne. For 1961, they picked the moment Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip met President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy at Buckingham Palace.

The moment was dramatized in The Crown season two. In episode eight, "Dear Mrs. Kennedy," which depicted the Queen's displeasure with Jackie Kennedy—which isn't exactly how their visit went down.

In the episode, the Queen finds out that Jackie Kennedy referred to Buckingham Palace as a "second-rate, dilapidated and sad, like a neglected provincial hotel," adding "one came away with a sense of a tired institution without a place in the modern world," and said the queen was "a middle-aged woman so incurious, unintelligent and unremarkable that Britain’s new reduced place in the world was not a surprise but an inevitability."

However, there's no actual evidence of these criticisms—they're simply The Crown taking creative liberty.

Photo credit: Bettmann - Getty Images
Photo credit: Bettmann - Getty Images

Indeed, JFK wrote in a birthday note to the Queen, "May I also at the same time say how grateful my wife and I are for the cordial hospitality offered to us by your Majesty and Prince Philip during our visit to London last Monday," he said. "We shall always cherish the memory of that delightful evening."

And, the following year, when Jackie Kennedy had lunch with Queen Elizabeth, the First Lady told the press, "I don’t think I should say anything about it except how grateful I am and how charming she was."


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