Prince Harry notes weird royal rituals that left him 'full of blood'

Despite the fact that Prince Harry had a proper royal upbringing, he recalls that some royal customs had a tendency to veer into the absolutely strange, with one incident leaving the prince with a mouthful of blood and intestines.

The Duke of Sussex described some of his earliest hunting kills in his explosive book Spare. He told how, after taking down his first stag, his guide performed an odd rite by pressing his face into the dead animal's belly.

As quoted by Prince Harry, after he had shot down the stag with one shot, the guide, Sandy, moved forward and 'knelt before it, took out his gleaming knife, bled it from the neck and slit open the belly.'

Sandy then 'motioned for Prince Harry to kneel', which he did, thinking that they were 'going to pray', but he couldn’t be more wrong.

"I knelt closer… He (Sandy) placed a hand gently behind my neck, and now I thought he was going to hug me, congratulate me… Instead, he pushed my head inside the carcass," revealed Harry.

He further wrote, "I tried to pull away… I was shocked… by the infernal smell. My breakfast jumped up from my stomach… After a minute, I couldn’t smell anything, because I couldn’t breathe. My nose and mouth were full of blood, guys, and a deep, upsetting warmth."

In order to finish the rite, Sandy was instructed to not wipe the blood from his face but rather to let it dry after he finally managed to remove it from the dead stag's belly, according to Prince Harry.

On January 10, Prince Harry's autobiography Spare was published. It was filled with shocking revelations regarding his time as a member of the British royal family.