Curious Chapbooks & Hysterical Histories

Chapter 11

THE BLOOD of KINGS

Before concluding this investigation into the blood of the British royal family, the careful reader must take stock of the incredible assertions presented in this study. Do family curses exist other than in the minds of family members? Could Victoria and Albert have produced a race of vampires?

Could there be something materially different about the blood of kings that would separate royalty genetically from the rest of humankind? Anthropologically speaking, yes. According to Sir James Frazer, kings traditionally were seen as sacred as well as political figures. All successful monarchies trace their genealogy from gods or their high priests. The British royal line once claimed the healing power of the sovereign's touch through the sanctity of their forefather Edward the Confessor (Frazer, 94). Frazer explains: "From beliefs like these it is an easy step to the conviction that certain men are permanently possessed by a deity, or in some other undefined way endued with so high a degree of supernatural power as to be ranked as gods . . . Sometimes they exercise supreme political power in addition. In the latter case they are kings as well as gods, and the government is a theocracy (99).' Such rulers "were supposed to wield a supernatural power over the elements (Frazer)." In fact, some theocracies maintain blood priestesses "versed in all the ceremonies . . . effectual in overcoming evil influences (Frazer, 97)." According to Frazer, these priestess princesses drink blood to summon the dead and use them as familiars. A famous cult of blood priestesses existed in Sambalpur in Orissa, India (98) during the reign of Victoria, and Frazer admits, "There is said, indeed, to have been a sect in Orissa that worshiped Queen Victoria as their chief divinity . . . (102)." She was the Empress of India, after all, and no doubt there she was considered the head of church and head of state as she was at home. It is tempting to imagine Queen Victoria--under the tutelage of the Munshi, her Hindu secretary--drinking blood and calling down thunderstorms of toads on presumptuous subjects.

Her family were in many ways weird eccentrics with unhappy stories: Prince Albert's early death of typhoid; the hemophilia of Leopold, Tsarevich Alexis, and Prince Asturias; Alexandra's mania for Rasputin; Anastasia's amnesia; Prince Eddy's ill fame as Jack the Ripper. Whether porphyria or vampirism, criminality or just plain bad blood, there is no complete explanation for the wide array of uncanny incidents and coincidences that accumulate in the royal biographies. Therefore, the best way to understand Queen Victoria is to accept legend as well as fact. Neither is the whole truth, but both are needed to comprehend the bright and dark sides of this Grand Old Lady of the nineteenth century.

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