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U.S. presidents have a longstanding history with the British monarchs. The late Queen Elizabeth II met every American head of state during her 70-year reign except for Lyndon B. Johnson. Michelle Obama even broke protocol by hugging the queen, which she didn’t seem to mind at all. Joe Biden was no exception. Joe met with Elizabeth in June 2021, an event that surely had his late mother, Catherine Eugenia “Jean” Biden, turning in her grave.
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Jean, whose maiden name was Finnegan, disliked Elizabeth to the point that she once refused to sleep in a bed the late queen might have used. But it wasn’t personal. As a proud Irish descendant, Jean was no fan of the British monarchy — or England, for that matter. While Joe never misses an opportunity to show pride for his Irish roots, he doesn’t seem to take it as far as to harbor hatred for Ireland’s former colonizer. After all, Biden’s ancestors have been in the U.S. for at least 165 years.
But Jean, who died in January 2010 at age 92, felt a much stronger connection to her ancestral homeland. That didn’t keep her from marrying a Brit — sort of. Joe’s father had English ancestry interwoven with his Irish roots. His great-aunt Gertie brought it to young Joe’s attention early on. “Your father’s not a bad man. He’s just English,” he recalled her telling him in his 2007 memoir, “Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics.” Jean may have made an exception for Joe Biden Sr., but she sure wasn’t ready to give the monarchy a pass.
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Joe BIden’s mother preferred to sleep on the floor
Jean Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1917. Her parents were also born on American soil. Even her grandparents were already Americans. But the Irish pride ran strong in the family. She proved that during a visit to the U.K., where she learned Queen Elizabeth II had once stayed in the hotel where she was staying. “She was so appalled that she slept on the floor all night, rather than risk sleeping on a bed that the Queen had slept on,” British producer and screenwriter Georgia Pritchett wrote in “My Mess Is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety” (via The Guardian).
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Joe Biden told Pritchett the anecdote when she was doing research for the HBO show “Veep.” The then-vice president also shared that his mother shared her dislike for England in many other ways, including through poems — many of which he kept. “He went off to find them and returned with hundreds of poems describing how God must smite the English and rain blood on our heads,” she wrote. Jean made no effort to hide her hatred of British colonization.
Her son, however, thought she had more in common with the late queen than she would probably like to admit. “I don’t think she’d be insulted but she reminded me of my mother. In terms of the look of her and just the generosity. She was very gracious,” Joe said of Elizabeth following his visit to Windsor Castle in 2021 (via BBC).
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