What’s the deal with the British Royal Family and circumcision? (Why) did Queen Victoria decide to have all her sons circumcised (& was Prince Albert too)? Does the royal family still practice circumcision given how rare it is in the UK? Did Diana really refuse to have William and Harry circumcised?
You’re asking whether Prince Albert was circumcised? The possible jokes are endless.
Heh. What a piercing wit you have.
Don’t give him a big head about it.
or
We need bad jokes like that like we need a hole in the head.
Well, are they? Particularly considering the family hemophilia? I admit, I have never really considered the state of Prince Charles’ penis. Perhaps this is an omission.
Though actually could the two rumours be related ? (I’ve heard of the one panache45 was joking about, not the one in the OP). That over time rumours of private controversy within the Royal family over circumcision morphed into “Prince Albert has his you-know-what peirced”.
Where the hell either of them comes from I’d be interested to know. I mean I can’t imagine such things were announced in The Times 
Queen Victoria believed that the British royal family was descended from King David. There was a movement in 19th century Britain called British Israelism, which believed that the British were descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel (or, at its most wacky, that the events of the bible took place in Britain.) British Israelism would eventually turn into the racist Christian Identity movement, but at that point, it wasn’t explicitly racist. See for instance, Blake’s poem “Jerusalem”
Anyway, British Israelism was fairly popular, especially among the British upper classes, and so circumcision was popular.
As for the current royal family, while I obviously don’t have pictures, the story goes that Prince Charles was circumcised by Rabbi Joseph Snowman, who was the mohel of London’s Jewish community.
As to whether Prince Charles is circumcised, I doubt we’ll ever know for sure. I, for one, am thankful for that.
I thought the theory around that time was that circumcision would stop guys from masturbating.
In my experience, this is completely wrong.
Hæmophilia is transmitted by a recessive gene, carried by the mother. If a male has the gene, he is hæmophiliac.
Queen Victoria is thought to have carried it and transmitted it via her daughters to other royal families, but since the Queen is descended from Victoria’s son, Edward VII, who was not hæmophiliac, the gene wouldn’t be in the current members of the Royal Family.
No, no…your first instinct was entirely correct. Never consider the state of Prince Charles’s penis. Seriously. Ewwwww!
Wills’s, on the other hand…
Hehe…that’s like some sort of London by Gaslight mad scientist genetic warfare… “Go and decimate the populations of continental royals with your wombs, daughters! In a century Europe will belong to Britain! BWAAHHAHAHAHA!”
Au contraire, I cannot link to it anywhere except in my mind’s data bank but I did read in a news clip (pun intended) or saw in a tv doc on the boys, about a year ago, that Prince Charles was not intact but that Harry and Andrew are. Intact.
I believe I saw a reference to it in Miss Manners, of all places. I’ll see if I can track it down.
Google is your fund (“Prince Charles Circumcised”) gives heads up on many citations of his loss, including:
http://www.originofnations.org/Royals/british_royalty_and_israelitish.htm
http://www.circlist.com/rites/british.html (Show & tell, pic not safe for work)
does it mention his brothers?
one of victoria’s sons did have hemophilia. i do hope they were careful, or perhaps they figured it out before and didn’t.
Unfortunately not. One of Victoria’s granddaughters became the Queen of Spain. Despite being the daughter of Victoria’s youngest, Princess Beatrice, a known hemophiliac carrier, the Spanish royals continued with their tradition of circumcision. I believe one of them nearly bled to death. (I’ll look it up in one of my books-one of Queen Ena of Spain’s brothers suffered from it)
leopold, that’s the one. leopold out of all of victoria’s kids had hemophilia. he managed to live to age 30 and had a son and daughter.
his daughter lived quite a while (97) and had 3 children, 1 girl, 2 boys. one son did not make it through a full year. the other (hemophilac) died in a car crash in his late 20’s.
Jesus, those poor guys. I remember Wills and Harry talking about the difficulty in trying to “live normally” with the intense scrutiny they are under, and the public fascination with their lives.
And now we’re even talking about their dicks? Sheesh! :smack:
Well, hey, royalty have always had the embarassment of people constantly assessing their fertility. How is this really any different?