Youth in revolt; Tom Quinn’s new book on the younger royals blood rituals and ‘woke nonsense’

It seems not a day goes by without another book either by the Royal family (in the case of Sarah Ferguson, jetting off to New York this week) or about the Royal family. But in the case of Tom Quinn’s latest book, there is more of a focus on the younger lives of the Royal family than a history lesson of the monarchy.

Gilded Youth: An Intimate History of Growing Up in the Royal Family was released on Monday, with publishing house Biteback Publishing calling the book “amusing and shocking in equal measure, Gilded Youth examines how the royal family has clung to outmoded traditions that centre on emotional coldness and detachment, and how, when it comes to children, the British royal family is still living in the Dark Ages.”

Who is this Tom Quinn and how can he have any agency reporting on the Royal family, you may ask? Well, he’s no stranger to penning works regarding the Royal family, after releasing Scandals of the Royal Palaces: An Intimate Memoir of Royals Behaving Badly in 2022 and Cocoa at Midnight, which details the life of a former maid to the Spencer family, Kathleen Clifford. He is also a Royal expert, acting as a talking head on BBC News and Sky News previously.

Quinn has also managed to gain exclusive interviews with those deep within the establishment, bringing outrageous tales of royal children misbehaving, in a culture that sometimes is viewed as overly stiff-upper-lipped. Of course, there comes some tea being spilled regarding the royal family also - as is the trend with these books.

Peopleworld has taken a look at some of the choice moments from Tom Quinn’s new book, which is available now through all good booksellers.

Meghan Markle was disappointed when becoming a Royal family member

Meghan Markle is doing the rounds once again - if her and Harry’s ejection from Frogmore Cottage this week wasn’t enough to satisfy any schadenfreude you have for the former Suits actress, then news about her disappointment when joining the royal family will hold you until the next ‘faux pas.’

According to a source interviewed for Quinn’s book, Markle was taken aback by just how rigid the Royal life was and hated being told what she had to do - despite knowing that there would be some form of Royal protocol. “She was a global superstar but was being told what she could and could not do, what she could and could not say. She hated it” the insider told Quinn.

There was also the revelation earlier in the week that despite her worldwide fame as a Princess, she constantly felt like she was second best to Catherine, Princess of Wales. She was shocked that she would "never [be] first in the pecking order.”

Harry become woke when he met Meghan Markle

With Harry becoming a more vocal advocate about toxic culture, the harassment he, Meghan and his mother experience from the press and his own trauma after his mother’s death, it comes as somewhat of a surprise that Harry wasn’t as “woke” as he is now - after meeting Meghan.

Talking to a former member of Eton during Harry’s time at the institute, they revealed to Quinn “Harry hated all that politically correct stuff—all that woke nonsense. He was funny, a bit cynical, and great company because, like the rest of us, he made jokes that we are no longer allowed to make.”

"After Meghan came along, he changed completely into what he would once have been the first to mock: a sort of a Guardian-reading tree hugger. It was all Meghan’s influence. We used to joke that she must be very good in bed to have turned his head that far.”

In Harry’s defence, people do grow and learn from previous experiences. By his own admission, Harry has said he underwent a journey of discovery through which he came to understand "unconscious bias. Perhaps this might be where the ayahuasca first started having its effect on Harry’s subconscious.

There is a “royal blood ritual” Kate won’t allow her children to undergo

An odd one - one that conspiracy theorists will love to quote going forwards also. There is apparently a blood ritual that the Royal family undertakes, but it’s one that Catherine, Princess of Wales will not allow George, Louis, or Charlotte to undertake.

Before we all rush to conclusions about a sacrificial goat on the grounds of Kensington Palace, the blood ritual is not quite as barbaric as that, but still barbaric nonetheless. The ritual instead revolved around the Royal’s love of hunting, including fox hunting - considered one of the most grotesque forms of blood sport in the hunting world.

Quinn writes that "few expect" Kate will "allow" her children to be initiated with the "blooding" ritual which, in the tradition of the royal family, sees young princes smeared with the blood of their first kills.

The practice was first mentioned in Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, in which he detailed the ritual; as “a tradition from the ages. A show of respect for the slain, an act of communion by the slayer. Also, a way to mark the crossing from boyhood into...not manhood. No, not that. But something close.

Prince Andrew could get away with murder as a young Royal

It turns out that Prince Andrew was indeed one of Queen Elizabeth’s children, to the extent that he could practically get away with anything and everything as a child growing up in the establishment.

In a lengthy excerpt from the book, Quinn wrote “from the very earliest, Andrew seems to have imbibed a sense of his own importance that outweighed that of any of his siblings, partly, no doubt, this was simply innate, but perhaps too it was the extra attention he received from his mother.

A former Buckingham Palace maid recalled: “I knew Andrew when he was out of the nursery but still fairly young. It’s very difficult to be fair to him because he was so horrible. He treated the staff as if they were dirt.”

“Imagine a little boy walking up to a middle-aged man who had worked for the Queen for decades and saying, ‘Bring me that horse’, referring to a toy on the other side of the room, and the poor man would have to fetch it.”

However, Andrew at times did reap what he sowed regarding his spoilt attitude as a young Royal. “When he was five he was staying at Windsor and bored, so he wandered into the stables and began to tease the grooms and stable lads, even going so far as to hit the legs of the horses with a stick.”

“After the stable staff politely suggested that perhaps he should go elsewhere, his behaviour became so awful that they threw him on a dung heap and shovelled horse manure on top of him. Enraged, he ran off shouting that he would tell his mother.”

The Queen, always an excellent judge in matters such as this, told Andrew it served him right and nothing was ever said to the stable staff. Andrew was furious they were not punished.”