King Charles laughed off an embarrassing mishap during a royal appearance.
The monarch, 77, toured the solar company Oxford Photovoltaics’ headquarters in Yarnton, England, on March 27. While unveiling a plaque to commemorate his visit, he accidentally knocked the entire thing to the ground from the easel.
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Charles laughed off the moment, calling it a “disaster,” jokingly suggesting they display the plaque in “the downstairs loo.”
Oxford Photovoltaics has developed advanced solar panels that are capable of generating more of the sun’s spectrum into clean and affordable power. Charles noted he hopes the company can help “speed up the transition,” seemingly from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
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“I think you’re remarkable, how you’ve managed to keep it all going, but it does take time to get to the point where you can actually commercialize all these things,” he said, per the BBC.
The company presented the reigning monarch with a customized solar panel cell engraved with the company’s name and the date of his visit, which Charles called “marvelous.” The former Prince of Wales has championed sustainability and climate change for decades, and said during his visit, “We need it all badly, all your products, fantastic.”
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While the visit shed a light on renewable energy, Charles accidentally dropping the royal plaque on the floor was a highlight of the day. His Majesty makes several high-profile visits around the world, and small mishaps are not out of the ordinary.
An awkward moment during one of Charles’ visits to Scotland went viral in August 2024. He spent the end of summer at the family’s Balmoral Castle, a cherished retreat for the royal family and where Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022. During his time, Charles made a solo appearance at the Royal Horticultural Society Aberdeen’s 200th Anniversary Summer Flower Show at Duthie Park, according to Newsweek.
Event goers and members of the press gathered around Charles to watch him cut a ribbon announcing the commencement of the show. Charles struggled to cut the ribbon with a pair of gardening shears several times. An event coordinator got dangerously close to getting nipped as he attempted to hold the ribbon taut so the royal would have a better chance of slicing through it. Eventually, Charles was able to cut the ribbon and chuckled after the moment passed.
While Charles can laugh off some things, he has lived his life in the public eye and also receives plenty of criticism as the current reigning monarch. In 2002, he spoke about the press on the anniversary of the first daily national newspaper in the UK, the Daily Courant. He took a moment while on stage to point fingers at the dangers of putting public figures under too much scrutiny.
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“For while the public services may seem to be Leviathans on the landscape of our state, impregnable to attack, their roots are human ones, and their reputations are susceptible to long-term decay and the corrosive drip of constant criticism,” Charles said at the time, per a transcript from The Guardian. “More of us need to recognise that we all have a responsible role to play in improving our society and our country, not just in carping all the time and running down those around us.”