The Queen Refused to Sit on the "Game of Thrones" Throne On Set. Here's Why.
She had a good reason for declining the seat.
When you are the Queen of England, you get invited to do some pretty cool stuff and get the VIP treatment wherever you go. You also get to meet whoever you want, musicians, politicians, and actors included. Queen Elizabeth may be a royal, but she's just like us: She appreciates a good television show. Back in 2014, when Game of Thrones was still in production, the Queen got the opportunity to visit the set in Belfast and took advantage of the invite. However, once there things got a little awkward when she was asked to sit on the Game of Thrones throne. Here's why.
According to Maisie Williams, aka Arya Stark on the hit HBO show, the Queen and her late husband, the Duke of Edinburgh visited the set. However, when she was offered a seat on the fictional throne, she wasn't inclined to accept. "She didn't necessarily refuse – no one said, 'Sit on that chair because it is going to be funny.' We all just sort of smiled and were like, 'Is she going to do it?'"
"She sort of looked at it and said, 'That doesn't look very comfortable,'" Williams continued. The show's creator David Benioff also discussed the situation with Seth Meyers, adding that there was a reason why the Queen decided not to take the throne. According to the writer, she is "not allowed" to sit on a foreign throne. "This is an esoteric rule we didn't know about until that moment," he revealed.
The Queen did, however, spend a lot of time looking at the famous set prop, and also chatted with the show's cast members. There are many photos from her visit circulating on the web.
While the Queen has never discussed whether or not she was a Game of Thrones fan, her Grandson, Prince William, and his wife, Kate Middleton, do fancy the series. "We've watched Homeland, big fans of Homeland. Game of Thrones we've watched as well. Seems like everyone has watched Game of Thrones," he said on Radio 1, adding that it was "worth a watch."
What is the Queen's favorite television show? Well, according to journalist Phil Jones, it is The Kumars at No 42 – or at least it was two decades ago. "Well, I've kept this exclusive story secret for 21 years after I was told by a BBC executive that, on pain of death, journalists should never reveal their conversations with the monarch," he wrote in The New Statesman. "In 2001 I was invited to a media function at Buckingham Palace. The first thing the Queen said was how much she loved Terry Wogan. No surprise there. We all knew the Queen was a Radio 2 listener. We chatted for ages, which I can tell you is rather surreal. My brain kept saying, 'Bloody hell I'm talking to the Queen and I can't think of a single thing to say!' In the end I alighted on, 'What's your favorite programme?' Straightaway, she said, The Kumars at No 42 and, even more astonishingly, proceeded to recite some of the one-liners from the grandma character, played by the brilliant Meera Syal."
