Although Prince Charles was named the Prince of Wales when he was nine years old, he wasn’t officially invested into the role until 1969 at the age of 20. The lavish televised ceremony, held at Caernarfon Castle in Wales, “was going to be like a sort of coronation mark two,” royal biographer Robert Hardman said on the Daily Mail’s “Palace Authorised” YouTube show. But terrorist incidents leading up to the investiture caused Queen Elizabeth so much distress that Buckingham Palace created an elaborate excuse for her to cancel all of her public appearances in the days following, according to Hardman.
The royal columnist shared that “there was this sort of nascent terrorist movement” in Wales at the time. Welsh separatists intended to disrupt the event by planting bombs across the region, including one that prematurely exploded and killed two of the terrorists just hours before the ceremony.
