Sex with the Queen

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LUSCIOUS MISTRESSES GRACED THE BEDS OF MOST EUROPEAN kings for hundreds of years, pocketing eye-popping salaries and sometimes ruling nations. Indeed, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the position of royal mistress was almost as official as that of prime minister. She influenced the arts, charmed foreign ambassadors, and appointed ministers. Her rooms were often grander than those of the queen, her gowns more gorgeous, her jewels more dazzling.

While adultery was never lauded, judgment was often mute when the king took a mistress; he had been forced for political reasons to marry an unattractive, awkward foreign princess with whom he had absolutely nothing in common. In 1662 the tall, swarthy Charles II of England wed the tiny bucktoothed Princess Catherine of Portugal. Much to his bride’s chagrin, Charles refused to give up his highly sexed auburn-haired mistress, Barbara, Lady Castlemaine.

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