The royal family have highly trained security teams for a very important reason. As one of the world’s most famous families, they have found themselves to be the target of assassination and kidnap plots over the decades.
The Queen
A man named Christopher John Lewis tried to kill the late Queen in 1981 in New Zealand. Hiding a gun, he fired through a window at the Queen, missing her. He was arrested eight days later with public possession of a firearm and public discharging of a firearm, which surprised him at the time, as he reportedly replied: “Only two charges, what? Shit … Had the bullet hit her, would it be treason?”
In another instance, a man named Jaswant Singh Chail admitted that he broke into the grounds of Windsor Castle with a crossbow in the hopes of killing the Queen. He was near her private apartments back in 2021 when he was apprehended, and he claimed to want revenge for the 1919 Amritsar massacre in India. He pleaded guilty to section two of the Treason Act as well as possession of an offensive weapon and making threats to kill. At the time, a royal protection officer questioned him, to which he replied: “I am here to kill the Queen.”
Prince George
In 2018, a man named Husnain Rashid was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 25 years for encouraging an attack on Prince George’s using the messaging site Telegram. He pleaded guilty to the offense of encouraging terrorism after sharing several suggestions on how to launch an attack as well as sharing images of George’s school.
At the time, Judge Andrew Lees said during sentencing: “The message was clear – you were providing the name and address of Prince George’s school, an image of Prince George’s school, and the instruction or threat that Prince George and other members of the Royal family should be viewed as potential targets.”
King Charles
The then-Prince of Wales remained remarkably unperturbed when a man named David Kang tried two blank shots at him back in 1994 while he was about to make a speech in Australia. While the man never intended any harm to the royal, instead hoping to draw attention to Australian detention centres, he was sentenced to 500 hours of community service for threatening unlawful violence.
