Royal Sex: Mistresses & Lovers of the British Royal Family

by Roger Powell

Exposes the amazing story of how key English aristocratic families supplied the British royal family mistresses over several generations to secure influence at court.

Author is an expert investigative genealogist specializing in the British Royal Family.

Perfect follow-up to the author’s successful last book, Royal Bastards:Illegitimate Children of the British Royal Family (The History Press 2008).

The current Prince of Wales, Britain’s future King, has married his mistress and she will become, barring an accident, the next Queen Consort. This is a unique situation and one that is unlikely to be repeated. Of course, only 70 years ago, his great uncle was in a not dissimilar predicament which cost him his throne.

Royal Sex show how a certain number of key aristocratic families appear to have cornered the market in providing British monarchs with mistresses over successive centuries. The present Duchess of Cornwall is a prime example, her great-grandmother, Alice Keppel was a mistress of Edward VII, as the Duchess was of Prince Charles. The reason? To capture and exploit royal power & royal patronage to place a royal mistress or favorite at the centre of power.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Where to begin?

It's separated into chapters by royal houses (Tudor, Stuart, etc.), then each section is named by a royal mistress/lover. You'd think that each section would then be about the person it's named after. It is, but the author chases several rabbits, offering details that should be in other places. It's very scattered, very all over the place. I had a hard time keeping up with who and what I was reading about and eventually I lost interest. Which is sad, considering this was a book I bought whilst in London, England.

The author also has a habit of ending paragraphs with "...and the rest is history." Well, for those of us who want to learn about the history, that tells us nothing. Then again, giving us the history would have made the book even longer and more unwindy so maybe that's a blessing in disguise.

Very disappointing read.

[Krista · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful- I couldn't even finish it! The plot itself was awesome, and I was really looking forward to learning about the history of British royal mistresses. However, the grammar and editing in the book was so lacking that prior readers had actually used a purple pen to correct spelling and punctuation mistakes. I would not recommend reading this book, there are others out there that document the history of royal accepted adultery.

[Andrea Zuvich · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this just last night and I really enjoyed the section on the Stuarts. There were several pros: I was amazed that Powell included a pretty sizeable piece on Elizabeth Villiers, as so few even know of her existence! Largely interesting, and I learned something about Hans Bentinck that I never came across before (his engagement to Stuarta). There is only one con: some sentences didn't flow well - nothing that a few hyphens or commas wouldn't fix! I look forward to reading another book by Powell.

[Melanie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I read about five pages of this book. I read the first three and wondered, "Is it all like this?" Skimmed through... Yup. The whole thing reads like the most boring parts of the Bible ("This man married this woman and they had this child who died and then they had this child who married this person...") Major disappointment. With a title like Royal Sex, I never would have guessed I would be so horribly bored.

[Cynthia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh. My. Word. I am not sure what this book is supposed to be, but it was like a huge doctoral thesis unedited. Mr. Powell unloaded an enormous dump of knowledge, dates and hobby-horses onto the page, and never looked at it again. It is replete with actual grammatical errors; run-on sentences, sentence fragments, missing words that even a cursory edit would have caught, and a complete lack of regard for how a pronoun is supposed to cast back to the last proper noun. He is absolutely obsessed with tracing back every royal favorite's genealogy to prove that being a royal favorite is some sort of chromosomal thing, hereditary, as it were. So Lady Diana Spencer is tracked back over eons and eons to Charles II's mistress. So you can't follow a story. because with no warning, no change of paragraph, often not even a comma, you are tracking somebody's great great grandmother's affairs with multiple Europeans and not until a name like George IV or Waterloo clues the reader in that the subject has been changed does the reader realize that the 'she' no longer refers to Diana but to Evie Servingwench. There are also SPELLING errors of the type that spell check doesn't catch because it is a real word, but NOT the one the author wanted. Example: 'The soldiers fort all day." "There were fore children of the marriage." On and on and ON like that! In a published book with a publisher and editor cited! And once finished with his gigantic regurgitation of everything he knew about everybody who ever slept with anybody remotely related to royalty (I mean really, do we need a five page digression about how somebody's great grandmother had an affair with a Royal Dukeness of Royal SaxFrance. No. No, we do not.) Mr. Powell evidently put a huge number of commas and exclamation points in a giant sifter and kind of shook it over the manuscript so you have, for no,, reason! These punctuators sprinkled throughout with no attempt made to use them to do what they are hired to do - make your communication more, clear! Plus Mr. Powell LOVES the word 'bastard' and is perfectly capable of using it 12, 14, 35 times in one paragraph about the same person. It's like his mummy washed his mouth out with soap for using that word when he was little so now he is delighting in using it as much as he pleases. A (pseudo) sample follows. "Mary was the bastard daughter, of bastard Cleopatra who was the bastard daughter of bastard Hesmet the Magnificent. Bastard bastard bastard!,"! I finished this book out of pure stubbornness and love for the person who gave it to me but oh. My. Word. !,! Bastard!

[E · Rating 2 out of 5]

Plenty of information, but it's astounding how a book about illicit love affairs can be so dry and boring. The stories are largely lists of names and how they're connected in rapid succession, the confusing nature of which is compounded by incredible run-on sentences and grammar which is, while technically correct, nearly incomprehensible to read. Multiple times I thought that a name was connected to a title, only to figure out by context half a (lengthy) sentence later that it was two different individuals. Think the old screencap of "Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector". That, but with English titles and place names. The only reason it gets two stars is because I might be able to use it in a research paper someday thanks to the lengthy, usually irrelevant genealogies and connections included.

[Michell Karnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Royal Sex covers all of the most well-known mistresses of the British Monarchs and some other key figures. The book begins with Henry VIII and progresses through the current royal family. While I liked the topic the author often strays far into the family of each mistress which I often found confusing trying to keep track of relations. Also as the book progresses it seemed each mistress related back to Barbara Villers is some way. When the author came to the current royal family I didn't care for his reference to how current members are not choosing spouses from other royal families implying the monarchy is becoming common.

[gage sugden · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't mind the weird tangents necessarily, my ADHD kinda digs that vibe, but the killer for me was the utter lack of context--Powell doesn't specify whether the "affair" he's talking about is well attested and universally acknowledged as historical or pure fanciful speculation with next to zero evidence. Speculation can be fun especially with a spicy topic like this, but Powell's writing isn't fun at all so you may as well just binge read wikipedia articles. The grammar and punctuation will be better in them too.

Bought on a whim for a few bucks at B&N years ago, think I'll be donating this one to goodwill.

[Caitlin S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting concept but the book is riddled with grammatical errors.

[Sinlovesbooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poorly structured, it was a slong to read through and I love the subject matter. The way it was set up and organized makes it cluttered and clunky.

[Ashley Holland · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was very boring. I barely skimmed it & skipped whole chapters to get to more recent Royal members. I don’t recommend this

[Annette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Source: Free copy from Amberley Publishing for purpose of review.

Summary:
Beginning with Henry VIII through Prince William and Prince Harry, author Roger Powell has written an interesting book on the relationships of British royalty. Some of these relationships led to marriage and some of them were extra-marital exploits. Powell brings to light certain key families in England, and throughout several generations, provided mistresses to kings.

My Thoughts:
The book begins by sharing from the life of Henry VIII. I was familiar with the women he had bedded. I was familiar with the women he married. I was familiar with the illegitimate children he produced. I did not feel I learned anything new on his life. Included in this chapter is Henry's sister Mary, Mary and Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth Blount, Lady Carew.
The chapter on "The Jacobean Period" gave lengthy information about James 1 being gay. From what I've read from other authors and historians this point is a guess, based on his physical displays of affection and lavish money spent on male "friends". Maybe he was and maybe he was not. He did marry and have children. Being gay, if he was, did not affect his ability to have sex with his wife several times and sire children.
"The Stuart Period" covered the years of Charles I and Charles II. Charles II had several mistresses. He sired several illegitimate children.
The next chapters cover the Hanoverian Period, Edwardian Period, House of Windsor". "The House of Windsor" told the stories of Charles and Diana, Charles and Camilla, William and Katherine.

How do I feel about this book?

I did not care for the lengthy list of who slept with whom and whom their lineage was. I felt winded and lost at times with the information given.
The print I felt was too small.
I felt saddened by their lifestyle. It seemed to me that most never were fulfilled with a faithful and committed love. They were searching for fulfillment in the ecstasy that was required to pamper their fetish, or cover up the vacuum in their heart.
I did not appreciate the tone or comment from the author, "Are we perhaps witnessing another stage in the dumbing down of the monarchy?" Page 241. This comment was made in reference to Prince William and Prince Harry's choice in women.

What I found interesting?

Several families throughout the generations sired daughters that slept with kings. The authors research and knowledge of lineages fascinated and impressed me.
I'd known little about "The Stuart Period" now I am familiar with them.
Contraception in the 1600s.

[Judith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely boring book full of proofreading errors.

[Girl From the North Country · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sometimes meandering, other times choppy run down of some of the more well known mistresses from the Tudors to the Windsors. I generally love these sorts of collective biographies, and royal mistresses & courtesans are probably my all time favorite topic, but this one fell a little flat for me- the research, to be fair, is there, and that is primarily why it gets three stars. The caveat being, unless you're entirely new to the aforementioned women, it's just a dry rehash- and if you aren't familiar, this dry rehash is just going to seem a little dull. It's not Michael Farquhar (thank god); I think it wanted to be Eleanor Herman. Powell definitely knows his stuff, and perhaps that's the issue- as a genealogist who studies the royal family, he sometimes can forget to throw in the parts that make biographies entertaining. I had to push myself to finish it.

I don't regret buying it in print- it makes a handy reference, but I'm a collector on the topic. If you're looking for something about Royal mistresses to cut your teeth on, and you tend to favor more textbook-style reads, then you'll like it, even if you don't read it in one swoop and just keep it for thumbing through. If you're at all familiar with the protagonists, or just looking for some basic introductions to these women, with the intent of finding more detailed biographies of the ones who interest you, skip it and go with Herman instead- she at least covers a wider range and region.

[Kaitlyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book so much, but it was almost unreadable, especially for a book on such an interesting topic. Roger Powell seems incredibly knowledgable about the British royal family tree and all of their dalliances, but he lacked an ability to write about it for a public audience. A majority of the pages were merely a listing of dates and names (half of which were all Mary or Henry, which is no fault of the author's of course). This book might have worked better if led by the collection of personal stories splattered throughout, rather than an almost textbook like presentation of dates; Powell seems more like a strict genealogist than an author in that regard. The topic might also be better served if it covered a smaller period of time.

[Mickey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay. So. The information was really interesting and I really appreciate how it continues all the way into the modern royal family (though obviously somewhat outdated as it is from 2013).

But. I don’t know if my version is somehow really bad, but there was no introduction & no conclusion. There were so many grammatical errors, spelling errors and interpunction errors. It wasn’t written very well either and was just a review of names and dates, basically. And worst of all: it jumped from page 34 to 66 and then from 90-something back to 35.

Again, I hope that I somehow got my hands on a fake or something, but it reads like a first draft - and a rather bad first draft at that.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard to read. Not Organized.