Charles’s most famous mistress was Barbara Villiers, who had studied the banned sonnets of Pietro Aretin, whose work graphically illustrated the sixteen ‘known’ sexual positions. Her husband was created Earl of Castlemaine by a grateful King, and after she was discarded as a mistress, she retained her power and influence at court by managing a stable of young women for the King to sleep with throughout his marriage to Catherine of Braganza.

How 'The Buccaneers' Crafted Josie Totah and Mia Threapleton’s "Joyful" Queer Romance: "Never Even a Discussion" One of Charles’s most valued court members was Colonel Cundum, the inventor of the condom. Pregnancy was less of an issue than syphilis, which could be fatal (the disease killed the heir to the throne as late 1908). The Kotze Affair refers to one of the greatest sex scandals to hit the German royal court. It happened during the time of Kaiser Wilhelm II and may have involved his own sister, Princess Charlotte of Prussia. Indeed, the sex life of Prince Charles has been the subject of constitutional importance ever since a 1989 conversation with Camilla, recorded by an amateur radio enthusiast, was published in which Charles expressed a desire to be reincarnated as his lover’s tampon (in fact, when you read the tape in full and hear the tampon quote in context, it’s less creepy and more dumb than it sounds).Pauline’s attitude didn’t change when she married her second husband, a wealthy Italian prince named Camillo Borghese. She had many sexual partners, including Conrad Friedrich, a German lieutenant, and François-Joseph Talma, the famous French actor. There were even rumors that she was sleeping with Napoleon! Joy Behar Calls On Will Smith To "Get In The Ring" With Jada Pinkett Smith On 'The View': "He Sits There And Takes It" Henry came to the throne an 18-year-old virgin, and was first married to the widow of his brother, Catherine of Aragon, and did not embark on his first affair until 1514, when Catherine was pregnant (it was believed that having sex with a woman while pregnant could cause miscarriage). Because of his influence with the king and the queen, Struensee became the de facto ruler of the kingdom for a while. He was a follower of the Age of Enlightenment, so he used his position to pass many new and liberal ideas. A lot of these worked against the favor of the nobility so, unsurprisingly, Struensee made enemies fast. Queen Victoria is, arguably, the most famous British royal in history and her life has been studied and documented in minute detail. Unsurprisingly, this led to the appearance of plenty of rumors, and perhaps none is more enduring than the queen’s alleged love affair with a Scottish servant named John Brown.

He kept one mistress, Henrietta Dowd, for twenty years, and when he finally dropped her, his wife begged him to reconsider, for fear he would go on the tear with a string of feisty new lovers, which he duly did, hanging a portrait of one of them at the base of his bed. It was partly personality, but mostly her upbringing, says Spence. Born in 1912, she was the only child of a Scottish textile millionaire and his wife, who brought Margaret up in New York. “She was very spoilt,” says Spence. “She said when she was young her father taught her how to argue and get her own way.” At 15, on holiday in the Isle of Wight, she met a 17-year-old David Niven and he had sex with her; she became pregnant and her father sent her for an abortion. The Conservative government was already in crisis over the Profumo affair, and when Duncan Sandys, the minister of defence, was rumoured as possibly the person in Margaret’s photograph – as were Hollywood actors and royalty – he offered his resignation. The Great British Baking Show': Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith Sent the Wrong Baker Home during "Party Week"The Restoration court of King Charles was famous for ‘restoring’ the theatres and he also restored the tradition of seducing the actresses of the stage, including Moll Davis and Nell Gwyn, who received a townhouse in Pall Mall for her trouble. In his later life, Henry would send the artist Holbein overseas to paint portraits of prospective lovers and wives. In a scenario familiar to today’s internet daters, Anne of Cleves didn’t live up to her picture, and he subsequently dubbed her ‘the mare of Flanders.’ Charles II, the figure head for the libertrine Restoration era used to say, “God will never damn a man for allowing himself a little pleasure,” and during his nine years of exile (when Oliver Cromwell ruled Britain), he had at least seventeen recorded mistresses, according to Cawthorne. His first sexual experience at the age of 15 was a deeply Oedipal affair, taking place with his former wet nurse (in the era before bottle feeding, a wet nurse was a woman employed to breast feed noble-born children). At 16 he fathered his first illegitimate child - who subsequently became a Jesuit priest. Stream It Or Skip It: 'Catch Me If You Claus' on Hallmark, A Christmas Movie That's Part Rom-Com and Part Crime Caper Henry had several illegitimate children, including one with Mary Boleyn, the sister of his second wife, Anne Boleyn (see Philippa Gregory’s book, ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’). Anne and Mary’s ambitious father offered his wife to the King, but Henry declined, with the immortal words, “Never with the mother,” according to the writer Nigel Cawthorne’s masterful and encyclopedic book on the subject, “Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens of England,” shortly to be reissued on Kindle.