NEWS, OPINION AND COMMENT: Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex’s book “Spare” reveals another aspect of his character which I and many others find objectionable. It isn’t just the whinging (‘the ginger whinger’) and disclosure of intimate conversations within the royal family which more than irritates, it is the fact that he enjoyed and probably still enjoys killing animals.
In some ways you can’t blame him because being born into the royal family he was bound to be introduced at an early age to countryside pursuits as they are euphemistically called. It means killing animals for the fun of it. But there it is. He ended up enjoying killing animals.
In this particular story Prince Harry’s face was once shoved into a freshly killed stag carcass. He had killed the stag as mentioned. It was part of a “blood facial” ritual forced, it seems, upon him by a guide called Sandy. Sandy appears to be the genuine article in terms of shooting animals for fun.
Prince Harry describes how he went hunting for red deer with Sandy. He crept through heather and bogs according to his book. They came across a stag. He shot it with his rifle. Sandy went to the dead animal and bled it from the neck. He then slit open its belly with a knife.
Sandy told Harry to kneel next to the animal. At the time he was 15 years old. The Duke wrote:
“He placed a hand gently behind my neck, and now I thought he was going to hug me, congratulate me. ‘Atta boy’. Instead, he pushed my head inside the carcass. I tried to pull away, but Sandy pushed me deeper. I was shocked by his insane strength. And by the infernal smell. My breakfast jumped up from my stomach.”
He continues that after a minute he couldn’t breathe and therefore couldn’t smell anything. His nose was full of “blood, guts and a deep, upsetting warmth.”
His head was removed from the carcass covered in blood and Sandy told him to leave it there to dry as part of the ritual.
Why do they do these rituals? I guess it is to get young men and women used to the idea of killing animals. To inure them to the unpleasantness of it. To change their attitude. It appears to have worked.
Harry wrote that he felt a “swelling pride” that he had killed the animal with “one shot, clean through the heart”.
Well, thank God for that! At least the death was quick and his shot was good. But at the age of 38, he doesn’t seem to have any shame about it. Perhaps I have taken the story out of context. Perhaps in other parts of the book he has expressed his shame but I doubt it.
All the royal family engage in these sorts of objectionable, outmoded pursuits. In my last article I wrote about how he enjoyed killing birds with his brother William.
This is an unattractive aspect of a person’s character. Of course, his behaviour will appeal to sport hunters who are entirely insensitive to the sentience of animals and the pain that they feel when shot by a rifle bullet. And it is all in the pursuit of ‘entertainment’. Sick.
There is a final point which Rosamund Urwin of The Times reminds me of: brothers William and Harry profess to be conservationists. They promote a public image of sensitivity to nature and vulnerable people. And yet, they are indoctrinated through being raised in the royal family to be insensitive to the sentience of animals. And William is the new patron of the British Trust for Ornithology. How does that work? He has a history of shooting birds for fun. And his wife allegedly likes shooting animals too. They are fakes.
