Michelle Obama Charms and Gets a Warm Royal Hug

She is a reigning monarch known for her legendary cool. The other is a Harvard educated lawyer and the wife of the U.S President. On Wednesday, they came together with a warm hug which broke some 'protocols'.

Is it a case of much ado over nothing? In the rarefied echelons of the Group of 20 in London, it was a simple gesture from the U.S First Lady that sent protocols for a toss. And one can always trust the media to pick it up and run with it for a fair distance. On Wednesday, while meeting Queen Elizabeth II, the First Lady briefly embraced the queen. The event was an evening reception for world leaders hosted by the queen. The British media called it everything from a breach of propriety to an extraordinary show of affection. The palace thankfully took a light note of it and just called it an ‘a mutual and spontaneous display of affection and appreciation between the queen and Michelle Obama’. In the inviolable halls of royalty, every gesture has a hidden nuance. Every move and every utterance is dissected and commented upon. Even more so, for a sovereignty as hallowed as the British one. Therefore, it came as a pleasant change that the queen took the lead in showing a display of public affection with the better half of the world’s most powerful man. Though the queen never had a reputation for being emotionally expressive, this was a charming departure. It also goes to show perhaps that the Obama mystique has rubbed on the monarch. The Daily Mail said the "two women clearly took to each other." In the end, it was just a spontaneous display of affection. Nothing more and nothing less.