Beautiful Blood

Okay, hold up. Yeah, the title is kinda creepy; creepy in the way that you now probably think that I live in a dark room, dress in all black, and sacrifice small, woodland creatures to an evil demon.

Although let's be real, I'd probably would kill a rabbit or two if she asked...

But just hold your damned britches! I'm referring to one of the side-effects of the Battle of Towton. Towton was a climactic event in the Wars of the Roses when Yorkist forces defeated the Lancastrian forces in the bloodiest battle on English soil, ever (well, you can look up the Battle of Watling Street, but the casualty sources aren't that reliable). Sources say that the opposing sides would occasionally halt the battle so that the soldiers could move the piles of corpses on the front lines in order for fighting to continue. I mean Jesus! At that point I'd run like hell if I had to move a bunch of bodies just to get a chance to have some rusty axe swung at my head. Not the most exciting prospect in my book.
Anyway, you get the idea, lots of people died. How many? A lot, a lot. Like 1% of the English population a lot. The battle involved a whopping 2% of the total population of the island (4% of the males)! If the Wars of the Roses were fought today, that would mean that 500,000 Englishmen would die. Yuck.
So much blood seeped into the ground that the famous white roses which grew in the area became flecked with red as a result, hence the name "beautiful blood." Cause c'mon, what's more beautiful than a rose?

I'm gonna go with a demon.