Yesterday, there was a big service at Westminster Abbey for the 200th anniversary of The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). For such a big anniversary and such an important organization, you would think that some of the senior working royals would turn up for the service at the Abbey, right? Wrong. King Charles is still resting during his cancer treatments, Camilla is on vacation, Kate was setting up a photoshoot in Windsor and William was probably too drunk to attend a daytime service. They couldn’t even get Princess Anne to attend! But they got her husband, Sir Tim Laurence, and the poor Duke of Kent. The Duke of Kent was always a workhorse, but the poor man is 88 years old and he has mobility problems. He should have been allowed to retire gracefully years ago, but instead they told him to grab his cane and go to the Abbey and support his patronage. As for Sir Tim, he turned up to the service with a black eye??
Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, the Princess Royal’s husband, was sporting a black eye at a charity event at Westminster Abbey on Monday. The 69-year-old sustained the injury in a gardening incident involving some fencing at the weekend, according to royal sources.
Sir Tim did not let the shiner put him off attending the service marking the 200th anniversary of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), for which he is a vice president.
The ceremony was also attended by the Duke of Kent, 88, the president of the RNLI, who signed the charity’s 200th pledge scroll alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Dean of Westminster. The Archbishop hailed RNLI staff as “models for everyone” who “risk their lives for those who are not known to them”.
Like… I can understand how someone can give themselves a black eye from doing regular domestic or gardening tasks, actually. Pull a weed too hard and you accidentally punch yourself, or you slip or turn the wrong way and conk your head. I get it. But given everything else happening with this family, 2024 is shaping up to be Final Destination: Royal Edition. Charles’s cancer, Kate’s surgery, Kate’s “trampoline injury” last year, William’s neck bruises, Camilla’s exhaustion, Fergie’s skin cancer, and on and on.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.