I have no brief for the Royal family, and consider myself a republican (in the British sense).  However, if your favourite great-uncle had just been murdered by a group that purported to represent the people of another nation, I imagine that you, too, might react quite immoderately in the first instance, and say some things about the people of that nation which you might later regret.  No doubt you will recall some of the things said here, in the wake of the Twin Towers atrocity; many people made comments far more racist and unreasonable than those attributed to the late Margaret Windsor, and in many cases without the excuse that they had lost loved ones.

These things happen, and we can't revise our entire opinion of a person on the strength of one remark made under stress; if we did, few, if any, of us would have any friends at all.