French first lady Brigitte Macron tried and failed to hold Queen Camilla's hand in a royal faux pas

• Brigitte Macron breached royal etiquette by attempting to hold Queen Camilla's hand.

• The incident occurred during a D-Day memorial service in Normandy.

• Royal experts say initiating physical touch with a royal is considered a faux pas.

French first lady Brigitte Macron may have breached royal etiquette by trying — and failing — to hold Queen Camilla's hand.

The awkward moment took place in Normandy, France, on Thursday when Brigitte, 71, and Britain's queen consort, Camilla, 76, attended a service marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and King Charles also attended.

In a video shared to X by the Daily Mail, the French first lady can be seen reaching out to grab Camilla's hand after they placed flowers at the British Normandy Memorial.

Camilla, however, didn't extend her hand to Macron, keeping it firmly by her side as she stepped back from the memorial.

Social-media users noticed the royal faux pas, with one person commenting that the moment appeared awkward as Camilla did "not reciprocate."

Another wrote: "Protocol sometimes gets in the way of humanity."

It isn't clear whether Camilla intentionally ignored Macron's hand. Nonetheless, a former butler to King Charles previously told Business Insider that initiating physical contact with members of the royal family is usually considered a breach of royal protocol.

Grant Harrold, who worked for Charles between 2004 and 2011, said it's acceptable to shake a royal's hand as long as the royal initiates it.

The royal website says that "there are no obligatory codes" for greeting the royal family, but many people wish to observe the traditional norms, which consist of a curtsy, a bow, or a handshake.

"The complex matter of etiquette when meeting a monarch has links to a past when kings were considered to be divine. The royal touch was considered to cure illness as the monarch ruled by divine right," Richard Fitzwilliams, a royal commentator and the former editor of "The International Who's Who," told Business Insider on Friday.

"Greeting royals is now far less formal. Curtsying is optional, but there is a distance that is usually observed," he said.

"When Brigitte Macron gave Queen Camilla's hand a squeeze in at the British Normandy Memorial at Ver-sur-Met yesterday, it certainly wasn't reciprocated," Fitzwilliams added. "However, it probably didn't matter. It's part of the anthropologically fascinating body language of participants on state occasions."

Michelle Obama wrote in her memoir about the criticism she received for placing her arm around Queen Elizabeth II during their 2009 meeting.

In "Becoming," Obama said she didn't realize touching the queen was an "epic faux pas," but it "revived some campaign-era speculation that I was generally uncouth and lacking the standard elegance of a First Lady."

"I tried not to let the criticism rattle me," she wrote. "If I hadn't done the proper thing at Buckingham Palace, I had at least done the human thing."

Buckingham Palace and representatives for Brigitte Macron did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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