I found this article from
http://www.etoile.co.uk/Columns/RoyalScribe/040503.htmlMonday 3 May 2004
The Illustrated Royal Family
The last Anglo-Saxon king of England lay dead on a battlefield near Hastings, an arrow through his eye. William the Bastard of Normandy was now William the Conqueror of England. His next, most immediate problem was to positively confirm that the corpse before him did indeed belong to his vanquished rival, Harold II – a task made difficult by the dead man’s disfigured face.
The solution came in the shape of Edith Swan Neck, King Harold’s long-time mistress, who identified her dead lover by the words “Edith and England” tattooed on his chest, just one of several such illustrations on his body.
While not all stories of royal tattoos are quite so dramatic, just the concept of “royal tattoos” can seem incongruous to our modern perceptions of royalty. After all, wasn’t it only six years ago that Zara Phillips, Princess Anne’s daughter, caused a media sensation simply for having her tongue pierced? Personally, I was much more surprised when I learned that the Victorian era was high season for tattooing among royalty and the aristocracy.
Edward VII helped pioneer the fashion in Britain when, as Prince of Wales, he had a Jerusalem Cross tattooed on his arm during a visit to Jerusalem in 1862. Twenty years later, his sons – Prince Eddy, Duke of Clarence, the ill-fated heir to the throne, and Prince George, the future George V – both had dragons tattooed on their arms during a visit to Japan. Before returning home, they stopped in Jerusalem to be further illustrated by the same artist who had tattooed their father.
Queen Victoria may or may not have been amused upon learning about her grandsons’ new body art, but their mother, Alexandra, Princess of Wales, reportedly was most certainly not amused when she was told that the tattoos were on their faces, not their arms. Despite her undoubted horror at imagining the tattooed faces of her sons, Alexandra probably had nothing against more “discreet” tattoos, even among the women of her set.
Lady Randolph Spencer Churchill (née Jennie Jerome), the American heiress, society beauty, and mother of Winston Churchill, circulated quite freely among the Wales’ social circle sporting a tattoo of a snake around her left wrist. A well-placed bracelet hid the tattoo when it didn’t tickle her fancy. Her son Winston followed suit and had an anchor tattooed on his forearm, la Popeye. Even Alexandra’s sister-in-law, Queen Olga of Greece (1851-1926) – Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh’s paternal grandmother – was also reported to have a tattoo.
Still more royals outside Britain were getting “inked” around the same time. Another of Queen Victoria’s grandsons, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, had a tattoo, as did George V’s cousin, Czar Nicholas II of Russia. Actually, royal tattoos were common in Russia long before Britain caught on – it seems Peter the Great (1689-1725) and Catherine the Great (1729-1796) both had tattoos.
Moving out of the Victorian era, royalty continued to be tattooed. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in 1914 sparked World War I, had a “lucky” snake tattooed on his right hip – reportedly the exact place where the deadly bullet hit him. In Spain, King Alfonso XIII and his son, the Count of Barcelona, (grandfather and father of the present king of Spain, respectively) both had tattoos. King Frederik IX of Denmark (1899-1972) was heavily tattooed, including a Chinese dragon on his chest, various anchors and even the family crest elsewhere on his body. His grandson and our contemporary, Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, has two tattoos of his own.
Other modern royals with tattoos include Princess Stephanie of Monaco, who has several, and Juliana Guillermo, the daughter of Princess Christina of the Netherlands, who bears a small one on her ankle. Back to Britain, Zara Phillips is also rumored to have a tattoo. There is even speculation that the Prince of Wales – that’s right, Prince Charles – has a tattoo. Whether or not the sources are simply misunderstanding the frequent connection of Charles’s name with the term “military tattoo” – which is, in fact, a military parade – or are perhaps confusing him with his great-great grandfather is open to question.
Perhaps most interesting of all are the theories that Queen Victoria herself had an “intimately placed” tattoo and Prince Albert had a very intimate piercing that is now named after him. True or not, Victoria and Albert are two of the last royals I want to imagine with highly intimate body art.
While the appearance of tattoos on royalty may have sparked greater social acceptance of the practice in Britain, the real credit for the trend actually belonged to two explorers – William Dampier and Captain James Cook. On his return to London in 1691, Dampier brought with him a heavily tattooed South Sea Islander who was introduced at the court of William and Mary and would become known as “Giolo, the Famous Painted Prince.” Famous, perhaps, but it was Omai, the tattooed Polynesian warrior Captain Cook brought to London and presented to George III in 1774, that helped start the trend among fashionable society. Cook’s voyages also helped perpetuate the idea of tattooed sailors, as many of his crewmen returned home with tattoos of their own.
On a broader level, however, the overall popularity of tattoos in Britain and around Europe was really just one of the high points in the vastly fluctuating history of tattoos, which dates back to at least the Neolithic period (8500 to 4000 B.C.). The ancient Egyptians are known to have used the art of tattooing for ritualistic practices – on women in particular – as early as 2000 B.C. By 1000 B.C., tattooing had spread to Japan, India, China and the Pacific Islands. Tattooing in Japan was first used to ward off evil spirits, although by 300 A.D. it had become the mark of criminals. Ancient Greek spies used tattoos to communicate their rank and status to one another, while the Romans tattooed criminals and slaves.
Pretty much every part of the known world was tattooing by the time of Christ. Despite a passage in the Bible expressly forbidding tattoos – Leviticus 19:28 reads: “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print or tattoo any marks upon you..." – early Christians still tattooed small crosses on their arms to mark their faith. In 787, Pope Hadrian banned tattooing, but the practice continued nonetheless. In particular, the Danes, Norse and Saxons, regularly tattooed themselves with family symbols and crests, and the early Britons used tattoos in ceremonies.
All of which brings us back to poor Harold II, lying dead on that battlefield in 1066, his mistress and his kingdom tattooed on his chest, and William the Conqueror wondering how to identify the body. But while a tattoo may have helped verify William’s victory, it seems the Normans didn’t like tattoos and the practice largely died along with Harold – that is, until exploration and the Victorian Age once again illustrated the royal family.
