The Inheritance of Sausage Fingers: King Charles and his Family’s Famous Trait

Since his accession to the throne last September, King Charles’s fingers have attracted some unexpected attention.

In fact, his swollen fingers – which he previously described as “sausage fingers” – went viral and were at one point number seven on Google’s most searched list.

The king has been photographed on several occasions with swollen hands and feet, particularly after long periods of flying or traveling to hot countries.

He was also seen with painfully swollen hands and feet on the first day of his royal tour of India in 2019, when he took off his shoes to enter a Sikh temple in New Delhi.

Observers also pointed out the royal family’s swollen hands as they sipped a pint at the Prince of Wales pub in Clapham Old Town in 2021.

Queen writes to her music teacher about Charles’s hands

Although the monarch’s hands have been thrust into the spotlight since his accession to the throne, they have long been a visible feature on King Charles’ body – and were even mentioned when he was a child.

His late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, noted that her firstborn had large fingers when he was just a baby.

And his large hands were a feature described by the Queen in a letter to her music teacher after Charles’ birth.

She wrote: “The baby is very sweet and we are extremely proud of him. He has an interesting pair of hands for a baby.

“They’re quite tall, but with long, thin fingers very different from mine and certainly different from his father’s.”

“It will be interesting to see what happens to them.”

Charles’ comments on Prince William’s hands

While the King is certainly the royal with the most sausage-like fingers, his fingers aren’t the only large ones.

In fact, it appears he passed the fat ends down to his eldest son, something he commented on when the heir apparent was just a baby.

When the now monarch wrote a letter to a friend about his newborn son, Prince William spoke of his swollen hands.

“I can’t tell you how excited and proud I am,” he wrote, as quoted in Howard Hodgson’s Charles, The Man Who Will Be King.

“He really looks surprisingly appetizing and he has sausage fingers like mine.”

Prince Andrew’s allies insisted the photo was fake

Another royal with bigger fingers is Prince Andrew.

Although his figures did not attract as much attention as those of the king, they were the center of a strange conversation.

When a photograph showing Prince Andrew with his accuser Virginia Giuffre was published, fans of the royal insisted it had been doctored and was a fake.

And one of the reasons they gave for believing this involves the royal’s fingers.

The photo, believed to have been taken in 2001, shows Andrew with his hand around Ms Giuffre’s waist next to a laughing Maxwell.

It was first published by The Mail on Sunday in 2011 after the newspaper discovered Ms Giuffre living in a small bungalow in New South Wales, Australia. She allegedly gave the original to FBI investigators in 2011.

Andrew and his allies have spread a series of theories suggesting the photo is fake, one being that his fingers in the air “aren’t chubby enough.”

Friends of the Duke of York have already cast doubt on the veracity of the photo, saying the hand around Ms Giuffre’s waist “doesn’t look good” and suggesting he looks too small.

A source told the London Evening Standard: “Look at his fingers in the photo. The Duke has quite chubby fingers – they don’t look good, nor do the heights of the Duke and the maiden.