During the Invictus Games, people were keeping their eye on the Windsors’ various social media accounts, waiting to see if anyone – especially King Charles, the head of Britain’s Armed Forces – would say anything about Invictus or whether they would send their well-wishes and congratulations to Britain’s Invictus team. The Windsors were radio silent, although Prime Minister Keir Starmer did send his best wishes to Team Britain ahead of the games, and Starmer’s Veterans Minister attended the games too. Well, something interesting happened. Days after Invictus ended, King Charles had a surprise event in London yesterday, making a visit to the Centre for Injury Studies at Imperial College London. He ended up meeting a veteran who competed in the 2014 and 2016 Invictus Games.
King Charles had a kind word for a veteran with a connection to his younger son, Prince Harry. On Feb. 19, the King met Dr. Dave Henson during a visit to the Centre for Injury Studies at Imperial College London, where they spoke about the power of sport to help heal. King Charles, 76, made the stop to highlight the U.K.’s support for injured service personnel in Ukraine amid the Russian invasion ahead of the third anniversary of the conflict next week.
Henson, who demonstrated the use of virtual reality biofeedback technology to aid rehabilitation following limb loss, had a conversation with the King about his personal journey, which included competing in Harry’s Invictus Games, the adaptive sporting competition that he founded in 2014. Henson is a British Army veteran and double amputee who sustained life-altering injuries during a deployment to Afghanistan in 2010. He later captained Team Great Britain at the inaugural Invictus Games in London in 2014 and won gold medals, then repeated the feat at the Invictus Games Orlando in 2016.
“Are you still taking part in games and sports?” the King asked Henson, who was made an MBE for his services to the military in 2014 and earned a PhD in Amputee Biomechanics from Imperial College London in 2020.
“So I’m a touch too old, I think,” the veteran said in footage published by Hello! magazine. “I did the Invictus in 2014, the Invictus Games in 2016, Paralympics in 2016 and I stayed one of the trustees [of the Invictus Games] until the end of ’23, so I’ve certainly been involved with it,” he explained.
“Fantastic,” King Charles replied.
“I’m back in the defense industry now, working, I’ve got three children,” Henson said about his schedule today.
Yeah, I’m a conspiracist by nature, but I don’t know what to think of this. Was this particular meeting organized or did it come as a surprise to Charles, that he was meeting a veteran with a connection to Invictus and Harry? Was the “surprise visit” organized specifically because people were talking about how petty and ugly the Windsors looked for staying silent on Invictus? Is this Charles’s small way of acknowledging Invictus? Instead of all of this BS, all Buckingham Palace had to do was write a few tweets: “good luck to Team GB at the Invictus Games” and “congrats to Team GB for their outstanding results at Invictus.”
PS… It had to be a surprise/unannounced visit because Charles and Camilla’s visit to Middlesbrough last week was heavily protested by Republic. Those “Not My King” posters were everywhere in all of the crowd photos.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
