Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare (what’s left, in Portuguese), was released in January, but the stories told by the Duke of Sussex continue to surprise readers. In one of the passages in the work, the youngest son of Charles III tells about the first time he hunted an animal.
“When I killed something for the first time, Tiggy said: Well done darling!” he writes.
After the event, the prince narrates how the nanny who took care of him and William at the time, Tiggy Legge-Bourke, performed a blood baptism, something considered an ancestral tradition in the British monarchy.
“She dipped her slender fingers into the rabbit’s corpse, beneath the shredded fold of skin, smeared the blood over them, and tenderly anointed my forehead, cheeks, and nose. ‘Now,’ she said, in her husky voice, ‘you have been initiated,'” says the Duke of Sussex.
In addition to being considered a show of respect for the dead creature and an act of communion on the part of the one who kills, blood baptism is “a way of marking the passage from childhood to… Not adult life. No, nothing like that . But something close to that”, he explains.
However, close to turning 15, William’s brother was informed that he would have to undergo the true initiation of the hunter: the red deer.
The hunt took place one morning, near Balmoral Castle. Harry was accompanied by a guide, Sandy.
“Getting closer, closer and closer, we finally stopped and watched the deer munching on the dry grass. Sandy waved at me, at my gun. It was time,” says the prince. “I could hear her rattling breathing as I slowly took aim and squeezed the trigger. There was a piercing, reverberating pop.”
Upon reaching the animal, Harry says he was relieved, as there was always the concern of causing only one injury. After the animal’s eyes grew more and more opaque, Sandy knelt before him, produced a gleaming knife, slit open its belly and gestured for the Duke of Sussex to do the same.
“I knelt down. I thought we were going to pray. Sandy exclaimed sharply, Closer! I advanced on my knees, close enough to smell Sandy’s armpits. He put his hand gently on the back of my neck, and then I thought he was going to hug me, congratulate me. . Good boy. Instead he pushed my head inside the carcass,” says Harry.
Despite trying to free himself, Sandy pushed the prince deeper.
“I was shocked by his insane strength. And the hellish smell. My breakfast started coming back. Oh please, oh please don’t let me puke inside a deer carcass,” he recalls. “After a minute I couldn’t smell anything because I couldn’t breathe. My nose and mouth filled with blood and entrails and a deep, disturbing heat. Well, I thought, so this is what death is.”
It was then that Sandy pulled him out and, after breathing again, the son of Charles III started to wipe his face, which was dripping blood, but the guide took his hand and said: Nae, young man, nae. Let it dry, young man! Let it dry!”
Then the Prince and Sandy “set to work” and disemboweled the animal, removed the stomach, scattered the giblets over the hillside for the hawks, extracted the liver and heart, cut off the penis, and took care not to break the cord. so they don’t get soaked in urine.
“As my face dried and my belly settled, I swelled with pride. I’d done well with the big stag, as I’d been taught. A single shot, right through the heart. Not only was it painless, the instant kill had preserved the flesh,” says Harry. “That blood on my face didn’t contain any adrenaline, to the credit of my aim.”
The prince also reinforces that, at the time, he acted well with nature — as reducing the number of deer meant saving the population as a whole and ensuring that they had enough food during the winter — and with the community. That’s because a big deer in the larder meant plenty of food for the people who lived around Balmoral.
“These virtues had been instilled in me from early childhood, but now I experienced them, and felt them in my face. I was not religious, but this bloody ‘facial’ was for me like a baptism”, concludes the prince.
*Intern at R7under the supervision of Fabiola Glenia
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