The tense moment was captured on video.
King Charles isn’t about to let a few bad eggs ruin his day.
While greeting well-wishers during a walkabout in York today, a protestor in the crowd threw eggs directed at King Charles and Queen Camilla.
In video footage aired by ITV News, the eggs fall and splatter to the ground next to Charles’ feet. He glances at the cracked egg briefly before moving on to greet and shake hands with yet another well-wisher.
The protestor, who was later arrested, reportedly shouted during the incident, “This country was built on the blood of slaves,” per The Northern Echo. In response to the egg throwing, others in the crowd can be heard chanting “God save the king” and “shame on you.”
This isn’t the first time in recent history that the royals have been forced to confront their colonial past.
When Prince William and Catherine, Princess of Wales, embarked on a tour of the Caribbean earlier this year, their visit was marred and disrupted by protests in which residents demanded reparations. Kensington Palace even canceled the couple’s first engagement after after locals staged a protest about the monarchy’s colonial ties and William and Kate’s plans to land a helicopter in a community sports field “without permission.”
Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex, also received a frosty welcome during a recent visit to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. According to The Guardian, protestors staged a demonstration calling for slave trade reparations shortly after the couple’s arrival. “They hunted us down, they kidnapped us, they stole us, they worked us. They owe us and they must now pay us,” Jomo Thomas, a former chair of the country’s National Reparations Committee, told the outlet.
Edward and Sophie reportedly called off their subsequent trip to Grenada; the country’s own Reparations Commission on slavery had expressed interest in meeting with the visiting royals.
Source: HarpersBazaar.com
