Growing up as a prince sounds pretty sweet. You’re pre-destined for greatness, live in the lap of luxury, get to travel around the world, have the coolest toys, the most fun lessons, and, of course, get your tearful face smashed into the guts of a dead deer as you gasp for oxygen. Wait, hold up. That last one doesn’t sound fun at all!
The royal family’s centuries-old “blooding ritual” is one of those dark little secrets their public relations team would rather you not know about. The thinking goes that each royal must be taught the practicalities of killing, so they’re taken to the Scottish highlands to execute a deer. Once it’s lying in a twitching, still-warm heap a royal gamekeeper slits open its belly, and the child’s face is smushed into the steaming wound. Prince George is now of an age where this should take place but, to her credit, Kate Middleton, has stepped in and demanded her kids be spared.
The story comes via royal expert Tom Quinn’s upcoming book Yes, Ma’am – The Secret Life of Royal Servants, which takes us behind the curtains of royal life. According to the book: “Charles’s daughter-in-law, Catherine, Princess of Wales, has put her foot down and insisted there will be no blooding for her children.”
Sadly, she’s speaking from personal experience. Early in their relationship William apparently subjected Kate to a traditional blooding ceremony (sounds like an awful date…). William and Harry themselves were blooded at a young age, King Charles was by Philip, and we imagine each member of the British Royal Family experienced this for centuries.
The Royals are determined that no photos are released of the freakish ritual, but the best description we have comes from Prince Harry via his book Spare. Here he details how his whole head was jammed “inside the carcass,” suffocating him:
“Well, I thought, so this is death. The ultimate blooding. Not what I’d imagined. I went limp. Bye, all. After a minute I couldn’t smell anything, because I couldn’t breathe. My nose and mouth were full of blood, guts, and a deep, upsetting warmth.”
Yet another fine British aristocratic tradition! And safe to say, definitely not one designed to transform its victims into ice-cold psychopathic monsters tormented by vivid memories of drowning in animal guts. Putting my armchair psychiatrist hat on for a moment, I’m sure there’s an argument for deadening the consciences of members of the Royal Family so they’re not overwhelmed with guilt and shame at the luxury of their lives compared to their subjects. That said, it’d be nice if they could accomplish that without going all Ari Aster on us.
It seems that even stiff traditions of the Royal Family bend to modern thought, as both William and Kate have cooled on the whole bloodshed thing of late. In Tom Quinn’s previous book Gilded Youth he claimed that William recognized that enjoying blood sports (they primly call them “field sports”) isn’t a good look: “he is also conscious that the tide is now moving against what many people now refer to as blood sports.”
Perhaps we should sound a note of caution. Traditions are usually in place for a reason, so theoretically this ceremony could be designed to satiate some ingrained Windsor family bloodlust. Kate’s children will now be denied their crimson baptism, so they may seek to fulfill it in a… less savory manner. What we’re saying is, just to be safe, we should count the servants going in and out of the palace each day and make sure the numbers tally up…
