The Queen’s First Tweet Is A Royal Mystery

Think about your first tweet. Mine was sent from a desktop, but I’m sure plenty of people sent their first tweet from a smartphone.

But before you can ever send a tweet, you have to sign up for an account. And, of course, you have to type out an actual message. Only then can you press that little blue Tweet button and begin your Twitter journey.

The Queen, however, does things a bit differently.

In her first tweet, she promoted the opening of the Information Age exhibition at the Science Museum, signing the tweet with her official signature: Elizabeth R. The R stands for Regina, which is the Latin for Queen.

The tweet was sent from the British Monarchy’s official account, which has over 750,000 followers. At the time of writing, the tweet has more than 20,000 retweets and almost as many favorites.

There was some controversy over whether or not the Queen actually typed out the tweet herself, as videos of the occasion only show her strolling up to an iPad on a lectern, removing a glove, and pressing a single button. However, pictures taken before show her typing on an iPad. Still, TweetDeck shows that the tweet was sent from an iPhone, as you can see in the picture below.

Screenshot 2014-10-24 12.38.00

The British Monarchy told the Verge that this discrepancy was due to “processology” (whatever that means), and insisting that the tweet was sent personally by the Queen. They even tweeted about it.

Personally, I don’t mind if the Queen has someone else type out her 140-character knowledge bombs. After all, Ashton Kutcher can’t even handle the pressure and he leads no empires.