Sex with the Queen by Eleanor Herman

Author:Eleanor Herman [Herman, Eleanor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780061751561
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2006-10-06T13:00:00+00:00

SIX

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE: POWER, PASSION, AND POLITICS

With mine own tears I wash away my balm,

With mine own hands I give away my crown,

With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,

With mine own breath release all duteous oaths;

All pomp and majesty I do forswear.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WAS A SEA OF FEMALE DEBAUCHERY dotted with islands of prudery. To avoid tainting her cherished purity, Queen Charlotte of Great Britain banned from court those individuals who had the merest whiff of scandal attached to their names. As a result, the smallness of her court was outdone only by its dullness. This plain-faced German princess gave her husband, George III, fifteen children, and luckily for her, George was equally horrified at the thought of adultery. Many courtiers pointed sadly to this unnatural fidelity to an ugly wife as the cause of the king’s madness; in 1788 George began foaming at the mouth as he shrieked his obscene desires for the queen’s maids of honor.

Empress Maria Theresa of Austria was not so fortunate in the fidelity of her husband. Though Francis of Lorraine, Holy Roman Emperor, regularly did his duty by the empress, giving her sixteen children, he had a proclivity for actresses and ladies-in-waiting. Hoping to dampen her husband’s enthusiasm for other women, in 1747 the empress formed the Chastity Commission to investigate reports of adulterous sexual activity. After six months and a handful of convictions of prostitutes, dancers, and their customers, the commission was laughed out of existence. Francis’s diddling continued unabated.

Russia, first and foremost, was the land where female sovereigns openly enjoyed the sexual prowess of strapping young men. But by the latter part of the eighteenth century, western European queens were following suit.

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