English and British royal mistresses

The suggestion that Ecgwynn was Edward's mistress is accepted by some historians, such as Simon Keynes and Richard Abels,[5] but Yorke and Æthelstan's biographer, Sarah Foot, disagree, arguing that the allegations should be seen in the context of the disputed succession in 924, and were not an issue in the 890s.

Simon Keynes and Richard Abels believe that leading figures in Wessex were unwilling to accept Æthelstan as king in 924, partly because his mother had been Edward the Elder's concubine.

[5] However, Barbara Yorke and Sarah Foot argue that allegations that Æthelstan was illegitimate were a product of the dispute over the succession, and that there is no reason to doubt that she was Edward's legitimate wife.

According to Osbern of Canterbury, writing in the late 11th century, she was a nun who was seduced by Edgar, but this is rejected by later chroniclers,[13] and historians generally accept the statements of the 12th-century writers John of Worcester and William of Malmesbury that she was Æthelflæd Eneda, the daughter of Ordmær.

According to the late 11th-century Benedictine writer Goscelin, Edgar wished to marry her cousin Saint Wulfhild, the daughter of a nobleman called Wulfhelm, who had sent her to Wilton Abbey to be educated.

Goscelin stated in his hagiography of Wulfhild that she resisted his determined advances, as she wished to become a nun, and he agreed to marry Wulfthryth, who was also being educated at Wilton.

Williams regards it as uncertain whether they married,[19] but Yorke argues that they did, pointing out that Goscelin stated that she and Edgar were "bound by indissoluble vows", and that Edith's personal seal, which still survives, describes her as the "royal sister" of Kings Edward and Æthelred, implying that they recognised her legitimacy.

It is widely believed that William was faithful to his wife throughout their approximately thirty years of marriage as historians have never found any evidence of mistresses or illegitimate children associated with him.

[32] Richard's close friendship to De Vere was disagreeable to the political establishment and this displeasure was exacerbated by the earl's elevation to the new title of Duke of Ireland in 1386.

[34] Edward IV had numerous documented mistresses, they included: Richard III had two acknowledged illegitimate children: Katherine Plantagenet, second wife of William Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke and John of Gloucester.

De Velville was born sometime around 1474 to an unknown mother (some dozen years before Henry and Elizabeth's marriage) and remained a faithful companion to the King from his ascension to the throne until his death in 1509.

[45] While beginning proceedings for his divorce from Katherine of Aragon (as she had borne him no male heir), he attempted to seduce Anne; she repudiated his advances, and he married her instead on 25 January 1533.

[47] James I, the first of the Stuart monarchs, is widely believed to have been bisexual, as he had a number of intensely emotional relationships with men throughout his life, including Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset and then George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham.

Robert Carr, who was Scottish like the King, caught James' attention when he fell off a horse and broke his leg during a tourney.

He rose quickly in the court, first to the rank of knight and then becoming Viscount Rochester, being given a seat in the Privy Council, and being created Earl of Somerset in rapid succession.

[2] George Villiers followed after the deposition of Robert Carr, and his rise in royal favour was so quick that contemporaries described it as a flight rather than a growth.

Many assumed that his fall from favour would be just as rapid; in preparation, the ambitious Howard family arranged for a boy named William Monson to become known to James.

James married his lover to Katherine Manners, the richest heiress in England and the next-in-line for the title and associated property of the barony of Ros, which she would inherit in 1632.

Barbara also wielded considerable political power, obtaining for her friends and family places on the Privy Council and undermining peace efforts between the Kingdom of England and the Dutch Republic.

Monmouth's rebellion failed, at least in part because he could not produce evidence to support his legitimacy, and Lucy is usually considered by historians to be a royal mistress rather than a secret wife.

He did not follow the accepted standard of beauty of the time: while his contemporaries sought out heavy-set, voluptuous women on the Baroque model, James was attracted to skinny, boyish young girls in their teens.

[50] His brother, King Charles II, sent lawyers to Breda when Anne Hyde insisted they had been secretly married, where the legal marriage was registered in the public records as having taken place there on 24 November 1659.

Charles I was also extremely attached to Villiers, his father's friend, but he is not known to have had a physical relationship with anybody but his wife, Queen Henrietta Maria of France.

George I had divorced his wife Sophia Dorothea of Celle 20 years before his accession to the British throne, and thus brought with him to the Kingdom of Great Britain his long-established mistress: Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenburg, who was so tall and scrawny that she was nicknamed "the maypole".

[2] Sophia von Kielmansegg, sometimes referred to as a mistress of George I, was actually his morganatic half-sister; they were both children of Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover.

He made a point of visiting Henrietta for several hours each night, locking the door, but most agreed that they spent their time playing cards.

George II did not take another mistress after his wife's death of umbilical rupture on 20 November 1737, until Amalie von Wallmoden, Countess of Yarmouth.

George IV and his legitimate wife Caroline of Brunswick were never fond of their arranged marriage and lived separately from 1796 to her death on 7 August 1821.

His notable mistresses included a French actress, Hortense Schneider, Giulia Barucci, who boasted that she was the "greatest whore in the world", Susan Pelham-Clinton, who had already eloped twice, Lillie Langtry, an actress who had also been courted by Edward's brother and an Austrian prince, Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, Agnes Keyser, and Alice Keppel, who of all his mistresses had the most political power and sat at his deathbed in 1910.

[2] Charles III, who ascended on 8 September 2022, engaged in an on-and-off affair with Camilla Shand starting from 1971 and later admitted that he had never loved his first wife, Lady Diana Spencer, whom he felt obliged to marry (in 1981).