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The British Royal Family is arguably the most popular royal family in the world. Over the years they have earned a reputation for their diplomacy, elegance, and style, and many people follow the royals' antics avidly.
But the royals are not popular with everyone, of course, and members of the royal family have often fallen victim to attempted violence. Check out this gallery to see some of the royals' closest shaves.
The current king survived an attempt on his life in 1994 while he was in Australia for Australia Day celebrations.
The perpetrator, David Kang, jumped up onstage with Charles and fired two blanks of a starter pistol at him. The stunt was apparently a protest against the treatment of Cambodian asylum seekers in Australia.
Luckily the quick reaction of Charle’s security crew meant that he went unscathed. Kang was arrested, charged, and found guilty of threatening unlawful violence.
During her 63-year reign, the fearless monarch was the subject of no less than seven assassination attempts. The first and most notable attempt on her life came in 1840, when she was just three years into her reign.
A man named Edward Oxford fired two pistols at her while she was travelling by carriage with her husband, Prince Albert. Luckily both shots missed the royal pair, who continued their journey unharmed.
Oxford was arrested and charged with treason, but he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He was detained at the State Criminal Lunatic Asylum and subsequently at Broadmoor Hospital, before being released and living out his days in Australia.
Just like her great-great-grandmother, the late Queen of England has survived a number of assassination attempts during her long reign. The most notorious attempt came in 1981, when the Queen was visiting Dunedin, New Zealand.
Seventeen-year-old Christopher J. Lewis shot at her from the fifth floor of an office building with a .22 caliber rifle he had stolen. The shot missed and the Queen reportedly did not even know she had been shot at.
The shooter was arrested and ultimately convicted of carrying a firearm in public, which carried a sentence of three years. It is believed that the New Zealand authorities did their best to cover up this incident so as to ensure the British royal family would continue to visit.
This king’s 11-month reign was short but long enough to squeeze in a survived assassination attempt.
On July 16, 1936, as the king was making his way back to Buckingham Palace from a ceremony in Hyde Park, a man named George McMahon pushed through the crowd wielding a revolver. The weapon was thrown in the king’s direction but fortunately did not go off.
McMahon was arrested, charged with intent to alarm, and sentenced to one year in jail. Upon release he was a known Nazi sympathizer.
Responsible for introducing Protestantism in the 16th century, King James I was certainly one of the more controversial English monarchs. He became an assassination attempt survivor in 1605 when the infamous Catholic-led gunpowder plot was foiled.
A group of Catholics had planned to blow up the House of Lords and in doing so kill the king, but the plan failed because Guy Fawkes was caught guarding the gunpowder ahead of the event.
The plotters were executed shortly after the event, but their plan is still commemorated each year on Bonfire Night.
The monarch who led England through the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had a volatile personality and was not liked by many.
He had a near brush with death in 1800 when an ex-soldier named James Hadfield shot at him at the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane.
The shot missed the king and Hadfield was arrested. He was acquitted of attempted murder by reason of insanity.
The future King Edward VII was at Brussels Railway Station in 1900 with Princess Alexandra when someone made an attempt on his life.
The 16-year-old Belgian anarchist Jean-Baptiste Sipido fired two shots at the royal couple, apparently in protest against the atrocities committed during the Boer War.
One of the bullets grazed the future king’s face, but he was luckily left without permanent injury. Sipido was arrested and tried, but he was acquitted, largely because of his age.
Another attempt on royals came in the middle of the 16th-century religious turmoil when a group of Catholic conspirators planned to execute the Protestant Queen Elizabeth and replace her with the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots.
The plot was carefully planned but never came to fruition because the coded messages that the conspirators sent to each other were intercepted by people working for the queen.
The key conspirators were captured and executed, and Protestantism was firmly established as the official religion of England.
The only daughter of Elizabeth II fell victim to a bizarre kidnapping plot in 1974.
On March 20, her car was forced to stop as Ian Ball, an unemployed laborer from North London, drove his car directly in front of it and got out wielding two guns.
After a struggle with her bodyguard, Ball told the Princess to get out of the vehicle, which she did not. Ball was apprehended and sent to a psychiatric facility where he would stay indefinitely.
In 2015, the royals were targeted as a group by ISIS militants, who threatened to stage a bomb attack during Victory over Japan Day celebrations.
The threat was taken so seriously that the UK government authorized a drone strike in Syria to kill Reyaad Khan, a British citizen who had traveled there to join the Islamic extremist group.
The decision to launch the drone strike that killed Reyaad Khan, along with two other ISIS fighters, was a controversial one and had to be defended by the then Prime Minister Theresa May.
See also: Political figures who survived assassination attempts
Royals who survived assassination attempts
Some of the royals' closest shaves
CELEBRITY British history
The British Royal Family is arguably the most popular royal family in the world. Over the years they have earned a reputation for their diplomacy, elegance, and style, and many people follow the royals' antics avidly.
But the royals are not popular with everyone, of course, and members of the royal family have often fallen victim to attempted violence. Check out this gallery to see some of the royals' closest shaves.