What's Really Going On In Bloodborne - Blood Ministration

Rich Stanton of Kotaku wrote a very extensive interpretation of the narrative of Bloodborne that you can find here. The following is an excerpt from the article in which Rich presents his interpretation of blood ministration, and I highly recommend reading the original article in it's entirety. All content presented is the work of Rich Stanton and Kotaku, with only minor formatting changes made.

Blood Ministration

It's worth briefly pausing over exactly what blood ministration is. How big a deal was it? Big enough that Yharnam produced more blood than alcohol, because it was more intoxicating, and so jealously guarded that Yharnam is more or less closed to outsiders.

But intoxication is one thing. The attraction of blood, for many scholars of Byrgenwerth, was the promise of coming closer to the Great Ones – and, perhaps, of becoming gods themselves. “It made their dream of evolution a reality.”

The problem? “Blood defines an organism,” as the Rune Workshop Tool tells us, and by using the Great Ones' blood the early Yharnamites were making themselves the Great Ones' tools. “Both Oedon, and his inadvertent worshippers, surreptitiously seek the precious blood.”

The fact that the Pthumerian civilization had been close to the Great Ones and subsequently collapsed was not lost on all. The head of Byrgenwerth, Master Willem, realised blood was not necessarily the consequence-free wonder that many of his colleagues believed. He would be proven right.