Following Taylor Swift‘s sweet meeting with two survivors of the Southport stabbing attack that happened at the end of last month, King Charles III extended the love and support by paying the Merseyside town a visit.
The monarch made his way to Southport on Tuesday, Aug. 20, nearly three weeks after the tragedy took the lives of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga class. The interval, the Royal Family says, was intended to give emergency services the space and time needed to safely carry out their efforts following the fatal episode. Like Swift before him, Sky reported that the King also personally met some survivors for a private tea party following conversations with first responders and community leaders. On Wednesday, he will receive the families of the three victims, Bebe King (6), Elsie Dot Stancombe (7), and Alice Dasilva Aguiar (9), in London.
Meanwhile, the singer, who has just finished a run of five nearly consecutive nights at London’s mythical Wembley Stadium on Tuesday, had met two girls, Hope and Autumn, backstage ahead of her Monday concert. The moment was captured by their mother who thanked Swift and her mom Andrea for arranging the “most magical night possible.”
Fans were particularly moved by the bandage on one of the girls’ arms which gave a whole new meaning to the fan-favorite Taylor lyric, from her single “Cardigan,” “You drew stars around my scars.”
Swifties also noticed that the meeting could be behind Taylor’s teary displays on stage that evening. “This is so lovely. I hope when the girls are older this is the memory that shines through. I don’t know if this was night 4 but it would explain why Taylor was so teary-eyed. Must’ve been emotional,” one TikToker commented.
11 children and two adults were stabbed when Axel Rudakubana, a 17-year-old Wales native, entered a community studio in the Meols Cop area of Southport on 29 July 2024. The incident fueled some of the most heated far-right, anti-immigration riots in England’s recent history.
Receiving support from their idol and the sovereign has undoubtedly given those affected some respite in the face of such unspeakable acts of violence. Swift’s Wembley shows, however, nearly did not happen because of the rise in attacks targeting her fans. A few weeks after Southport, Austrian authorities and the FBI intercepted a planned terrorist attack on the musician’s Vienna Eras Tour concerts that were meant to take place between Aug. 8 and 10 but were ultimately canceled. London and Swift decided to go ahead with the scheduled Wembley performances by increasing security measures.