Queen Camilla criticized for publicizing Rowling meeting during Pride month

Queen Camilla is facing criticism from transgender rights activists after the British royal family posted a photograph of her meeting “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling at the tail end of Pride month, the Washington Times reported on 2 July.

The meeting took place on Tuesday 24 June at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, per the report. The royal family's official Instagram account publicized the encounter with a post emphasizing the two women's shared “passion for books and deep commitment to children reading” and the “importance of ensuring young people have access to books.”

The backlash centred on Ms Rowling's public opposition to transgender women in female-only spaces. One widely liked comment on the post read: “As an admirer of the Queen...I'm deeply disappointed in her giving a platform to JKR,” while other critics called the timing, in the final week of Pride month, “deplorable.” In March 2026, per the report, Ms Rowling had praised the International Olympic Committee's decision limiting female Olympic eligibility to biological women as “a welcome return to fair sport for women and girls”; she has said she supports transgender safety but opposes redefining legal sex categories, arguing that doing so compromises protections for women and girls. Some commenters defended the pairing, noting Ms Rowling “encouraged a whole new generation of children to read.” Buckingham Palace did not address the online reaction beyond the original post, per the report; Town & Country also covered the exchange.

Background

Literacy promotion is the most established strand of Queen Camilla's public work. She founded The Queen's Reading Room, a book club that became a charity, and has made children's reading a signature cause since before her husband's accession — the stated ground on which the Rowling meeting was framed. The Palace of Holyroodhouse is the monarch's official residence in Scotland, and royal engagements there cluster around the annual Scottish residency in early summer.

Ms Rowling, one of the world's best-selling authors, has been a polarizing public figure since 2020 over her interventions in the debate on sex and gender, drawing both fierce criticism from LGBTQ advocates and strong support from campaigners for single-sex spaces. The royal household, by convention, avoids association with contested political causes, which is why activists read the publicized meeting — whatever its literary framing — as a statement in itself.

What comes next

The palace has let the original post stand without further comment, and there is no indication in the material supplied that it intends to address the criticism. What can be watched is whether the household adjusts how it publicizes such encounters, and whether advocacy groups press the point beyond social media.