h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have just returned from having a blood test in hospital and afterwards I made my usual joke about being disappointed that it wasn't blue. It led to a discussion about where the myth saying Royalty had blue blood comes from. We couldn't come up with an answer. Does anyone out there know?

bloody is actually blue in the vien when it comes in contact with the air it oxides to the dark red colour we all recoknise. Artery blood is red due to the oxygen in it.

Arterial blood is simply a brighter red than venous blood. It isn't blue. It just looks purply through the skin and tissues.

Arterial blood is simply a brighter red than venous blood. It isn't blue. It just looks purply through the skin and tissues. The redness comes from the iron in hameoglobin, not the oxygen.

The Spanish nobility were the original blue-bloods: their pale complexion meant the blue in their veins was far more promeninent than in the rest of the populace. This was largely due to the nobility's practice of avoiding the sun: suntans were the mark of a labourer so a pale complexion conveyed status. It's also possible that the Spanish royals' lack of Moorish ancestors compared to the population at large may have enhanced the difference in skin tone.

Ah ha! I always thought that my inability to tan was a curse, now I know it is just because I have high social status and may in fact be royal. Well that's a relief!


k

Thanks Mycroft, so the myth about Royals having blue blood originated with the Spanish. Do you know what sort of date the myth originated in Spain?

Does the fact I'm pale and pasty mean I'm noble? Or does it just mean I'm anaemic!!???

I don't think it was necessarily the Spanish. Any royalty will have tried keeping pale, and therefore have appeared to have blue blood.

Not only were they pale, but their rich but plentiful diet and languid lifestyles lent themselves to varicose veins, which show up blue against the skin.

not to mention their habits of inbreeding and incest

Even the nobility of Japan avoided sunlight to remain pale.

That's because of warped ideas about what makes someone beautiful or admired. Riches and easy living are what society believes are beautiful and desirable, so the exterior signs of such define fashion.

In the ancient days, the common people worked in the sun. Therefore, anyone with a pale complexion was considered prosperous. So the rich stayed out of the sun, and the middle-class powdered their faces. The Romans did it with powdered white lead, with the same sort of effects Renaissance painters experienced while working with their lead-based pigments... insanity, delirium, etc.

Today, most people work indoors, and so it is considered fashionable to have a suntan. The very wealthy lay about outdoors all day, or rent a tanning bed by the hour. The middle-class use tanning lotions, and acquire an interestingly muddled orange hue.

In the ancient days, there wasn't much food to go around, but the rich had plenty. Fat was fashionable.

Today, in the industrialized world, at least, there's more food available than can possibly be consumed, even for the very poor. So now, it's fashionable to be gaunt and emaciated.

In the ancient world, very rich women could afford to hire much poorer women to suckle their children. These poorer women would have enlarged breasts as a result. Therefore, small breasts were the height of beauty.

Today, no one has to suckle their children if they don't want to, because formula is available. Big breasts came into fashion at just about the same time formula came into existence. And now that the rich (and even middle-class) can afford a rebuild front end...

I think it may have something to do with the blood disorder Porphyria, which was hereditary in the Royal family.

It is one theory for the madness suffered by King George III.

Preach on, Brother!

I was thinking that, but then I remembered that Porphyria makes the urine a funny colour, not the blood...

That is one of the symptoms, certainly.

I could go and rummage in the attic for my medical books, but I shall try asking my frined jeeves.

Omigod... I've just received a "Preach on, brother!" and an "Amen to that!" in two different threads within the last hour. Maybe I should step off my podium for a little bit...

of course going back to the poor working in the sun thats where the phrase rednecks came from.

now i am sure of that

But rednecks have mullets, how does that work?