British student protests go horribly wrong.

miocid

Banned
I know this may be considered bad taste (no reporting please) but what if...

During the recent British student protests i remember hearing about how the car carrying Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, was attacked on Regent street. What would the repercussions be if the students were radicals and (God forbid) had murdered the royals?

 
I think even attemtping to murder them would have been pretty bad. Murdering the driver would have been bad. In fact, if the students had murdered anyone it would have been a whole lot worse than it was.
 
As it is, it is already a testament to the self control of the constables present that none of them decided to draw its pistol out in order to keep the "protesters" at bay.
Things could very well have ended up in a carnage that night with deaths on both sides.
 
My two cents.

I'm not a Brit, so I don't think I'll ever understand how the British view their royal family.

However, I'm pretty sure it would go something like this.

If the student somehow managed to kill Prince Charles and his wife, you would immediately see the assassin being tackled by both the protestors and the police.

I believe that the British have a certain respect and reverance for their Royal family that goes beyond politics, even with, and almost especially as the Royal family has lost most of it's political power.

The death or killing of a Royal family member is something different entirely from the death or killing of an MP or Prime Minister or something similar. These politicians have political ties, and while not many people would say that just because you're from an opposite part means you shouldn't mourn them, the Royal family isn't political at all. The Royal family simply is, without regard to politics or any of that stuff.

Once the news that Prince Charles and his wife are dead spreads, expect the protesting to die down. In the wake of such an event, I'd expect that Britons would come together in mourning, rather than be torn apart by anger. There may be a few anti-protesters who try to pin the blame on the students, but don't expect them to get much headway.

Expect a compromise on the tuition rates to come about, in a sort of somber, melancholy way. Everybody will be going "Fuck it. Look what all this shit has gotten us." and will be willing to back down from extreme demands.

Expect the assassin to either be lynched at the scene by both protesters and police, conventiently shot while "trying to escape", or something similar.

As I said, I'm not a Briton, so I don't know if any of this is accurate.
 
The ones directly or indirectly get the proverbial book thrown at the them, everybody condemsn extremists, the royal line of succession changes, but I don't forsee any wider effects in the short-run.

The UK is not likely to start rounding up the children of the middle class and putting them in internment camps if that's the sort of thing you're hinting at.
 

miocid

Banned
The ones directly or indirectly get the proverbial book thrown at the them, everybody condemsn extremists, the royal line of succession changes, but I don't forsee any wider effects in the short-run.

The UK is not likely to start rounding up the children of the middle class and putting them in internment camps if that's the sort of thing you're hinting at.
As a non brit i was just wondering how the limeys online would have responded to this
 
The idea of the royals being killed by students seems borderline ASB by itself.

A luck/unlucky shot with a hurled brick or fire-extingusher could happen, but killing both, inside an armoured vehicle... while they're protected by armed police, that takes real determination.
 
A different, but relevant, WI would be what would happen if the protection officers had opened fire on the people who attacked the car?
 
The idea of the royals being killed by students seems borderline ASB by itself.
Well one of the protesters did apparently poke Camilla with some sort of stick or pole through a window that had been left ajar, all it takes is for the pole to be sturdy enough and to have a sharp point to catch somewhere vital being wielded someone that's willing (or possibly even does it unintentionally) and you're in business. So instead of pictures of Charles and Camilla looking slightly shocked you instead get pictures of Charles frantically trying to staunch the flow of blood from where the stick has managed to open a major blood vessel in Camilla's neck from which she exsanguinates.

Public opinion of both the rioters and even peaceful protests plummets. Even just in our timeline the protests and the riots effectively turned the public more against the students than beforehand, now it's going to be even more so and any future protests are going to be facing serious policing measures - more kettling, rubber bullets, water cannons etc. are all going to looked at as being more acceptable. The official leaders of the protests immediately start trying to distance themselves from the people who surrounded the vehicles and hoping to God that nothing even vaguely links them to the protests as otherwise they're going to get hammered. The stick wielder and any accomplices are going to get the book hurled at them - seriously long sentences, even those just unrelated banging on the car and shouting slogans are going to be spending serious time inside. Mass public sympathy for Charles.
 

Devvy

Donor
Just to point out, the attackers were reportedly chanting "Off with their heads!", so I could see it going bad.

OTL speaking...while some of them may of been chanting that, I highly doubt it would of descended into outright murder, much less that of a royal who isn't involved in the political process at all. The worst that would of happened is that the protestors destroy the car the royals are in.

This alternate timeline speaking, public opinion for Charles would soar (he's not exactly that popular in the UK, as he has a habit for saying the wrong thing) again, and even Camilla (who was denied the status of Princess, despite marrying a Prince) would be grieved over.

Public sympathy would shoot up for Princes William & Harry who would of lost both their father and mother, and William becomes next in line to the throne. The whole saga has the knock-on effect of effectively cementing the British Monarchy at least in the UK for the next 100 years. Not so sure about Canada/Australia and the other realms.
 
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