Talk:English and British royal mistresses

observations related to the DYK

 * I won't tag it whilst DYK is pending, but the style & historical accuracy here are not good, and you have to check where links like George Villiers actually go. Also per WP:ENGVAR UK English should be used. Johnbod (talk) 22:43, 15 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I will try to clean up the various links later in the day. I am a bit concerned though that the tone of the article is inapropriate. Full of innuendo and smug amusement. Dimadick (talk) 08:31, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I couldn't get past the inexplicable reservation expressed in "English royal mistress is the unofficial title... Most often female..." The article Favourite is down-played to a mere aside on Buckingham. --Wetman (talk) 12:19, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
 * User:Wetman is right to be concerned: whoever compiled this is making "royal mistress" out to mean something different from the #Royal mistress# article. Has anyone described e.g. Piers Gaveston as a 'royal mistress' ?--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 05:44, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Links
A quick note about putting in links for the names of monarchs. As wikipedia is international, if you link George I, wikipdedia cannot tell the difference between George I of Greece or 'George I of Great Britain'. To actually link to the right page, you need to link 'George I of Great Britain'. However, if that's going to disrupt the flow of the prose too much you can do it as 'George I of Great Britain | George I' in '', this will get you to the right page, but only 'George I' will be shown in the text. To see how this is done, have a look at the page in edit mode, and see how this link is arranged. Gone through and fixed the links now, hope I got them all! Indisciplined (talk) 12:43, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Eleanor of Aquitaine
The article currently claims: "The opposite –like Eleanor of Aquitaine, wive of Henry II, who is reputed to have murdered Rosamund Clifford, her husband’s much younger mistress and spent the latter part of her life in house arrest because of it".

The article on Eleanor agrees that "Nevertheless, rumours persisted, perhaps assisted by Henry's camp, that Eleanor had poisoned Rosamund." That part seems to be true. However Rosamund only died in 1176. Eleanor was imprisoned since 1173 due to her involvement in the Revolt of 1173–1174.

Also Eleanor only spent 1173-1189 in captivity. She was released in 1189, as soon as Henry died. Until her death in 1204, Eleanor was again a free woman. Dimadick (talk) 16:31, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


 * This article is full of nonsense - just hack away. Whilst in that period, you might add Ed ii's favourites, since James I's are in. Johnbod (talk) 16:47, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I have had a go at the Plantagenet Era: Normans, Angevins, Plantagenets, Lancaster, York have been made into just Plantagenets here and Henry II / Eleanor of Aquitaine was bungled somewhat. How do the male favourites like those of William II, Richard I, Edward II, James I get into the category of 'Royal mistress' anyway: all the mistresses should be female. Perhaps 'Medieval Period' would be better ? What on earth does he mean by "the Church cast a jaded eye on adultery" anyway? The church courts could punish adulterers but that would produce written records if it had been common at the time and be in the diocesan registers perhaps--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 16:57, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

William Monson
On the subject of favourites of James I there is a line with little explanation: "the ambitious Howard family dangled a boy named William Monson before James."

We have articles on two contemporaries of James I with that name. Admiral William Monson (1569 - 1643) and his son William Monson, 1st Viscount Monson (c. 1608 - 1673). A biographical article on the first one mentioned.

""By the beginning of 1618 Monson was so frustrated at his continued exclusion from office that he evidently consented to a scheme devised by the Suffolk faction to topple the new royal favourite, George Villiers, marquess of Buckingham. It involved his own second son, William, a youth of eighteen, whose handsome features it was thought would divert the gaze of the king from Villiers. In the event the flaunting of young Monson merely served to irritate James, who ordered the young man to be banished from his presence. Any hopes that Monson may have entertained thereafter of recovering favour were finally dashed in July 1619 with the fall of the Howards.""

Any ideas about the sources for this little affair? Dimadick (talk) 18:43, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Nothing I think in Personal relationships of James I of England, but perhaps there should be? qp10qp is one of the experts there & at the main bio. I have edited the James section to a level where he can probably be introduced to this article without great risk of a coronary. Johnbod (talk) 23:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

John Brown
As we are being thorough, I have added John Brown under Queen Victoria, with qualifications. There's been a lot of speculation, both at the time and since, about their relationship, though there is probably little truth in it. Indisciplined (talk) 20:32, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Popincourt
"His [Henry8] first mistress, in 1514, was a Frenchwoman named Jane Popincourt, a tutor in languages to Henry’s sisters Margaret and Mary. Though very little is known of her, her promiscuity was so prominent that even the French king would allow her back to his court, known for its promiscuity"

- is a "not" missing? Johnbod (talk) 12:49, 18 December 2007 (UTC) promiscuity was so prominent that even the French king would =(ought to be)=promiscuity was so flagrant that even the French king would not--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 10:26, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Article badly-written
The article contains too much slang for an encylopedia.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 13:49, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Flagged for cleanup
Intro and 'Reasons a royal mistress was taken' sections are insufficiently referenced and reads like a poorly supported school essay. Case in point: "Often, these brides were stringently instilled with a sense of chastity that often developed into sexual frigidity. To a king whose sexual appetites were often nurtured by friends and father-figures from a young age, this was a difficult barrier to surmount."

Where does the term "English Royal mistress" originate? Seems like a buzzphrase. ifny (talk) 20:39, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * @ifny, why not begin to redact the material that is unreferenced? As I note below, even in the case of the referenced material, it leans toward popular presentations more that the Welsh Historical Review. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 06:38, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

20th century
Two of Prince Charles mistresses during his 1st marriage, Lady Dale 'Kanga' Tryon and Janet Jenkins, are missing from the last section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.118.205.94 (talk) 17:46, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Secondary historical sources establishing these as factual? Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 06:36, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

While in many respects it is positive
...that only a single bare URL appeared as a source here (removed, today's editing), it is somewhat surprising that the scholarly (and scholarship citing) "Royal Bastards" from The History Press in the UK has not been sampled to provide a more recent, historical perspective here. I cited this work to correct a perception at the mention of Roland de Velville, but the source is relevant, broadly to this article (and affordable, and readily available as an e-book). See: The bit that I cited on de Velville was based on three scholarly works to balance the traditional perspective of this illegitimate birth (Profs SB Chrimes and RA Griffiths, with RS Thomas, and WRB Robinson, including articles in the Welsh Historical Review and Robinson's "The Making of the Tudor Dynasty", ISBN 0750937769, another apparently relevant work).
 * Peter Beauclerk-Dewar & Roger Powell, 2008, Royal Bastards: Illegitimate Children of the British Royal Family (Gloucestershire, U.K.: The History Press, 2008), e-book edition 2011; ISBN 0752473166

This sort of harder historical material, since readily available and readable, needs to find its way into this and related articles. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 06:35, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

WTF?
Why are George I and successors listed here? Either they deserve a different article, or we rename this one. British royal lovers, possibly. --Pete (talk) 23:13, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I've moved the article to English and British royal mistress, per accuracy. GoodDay (talk) 02:19, 19 October 2015 (UTC)


 * TBH, the article should be AFD, as not only monarchs have mistresses. Also, female monarchs have had affairs aswell. Overall, the article appears more as a personal opinon piece. GoodDay (talk) 02:22, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Clerihew
A purported Clerihew appears in the Stuart section, attributed to E C Bentley. However, it doesn't appear in my copy of The Complete Clerihews, and the metre doesn't match Bentley's published verses. Google does not immediately reveal any sources for the verse other than this article. Is it a corrupt quotation from another author? Tevildo (talk) 11:32, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

Rewrite
This page has been sitting around for way too long...I'm going to remove all the unsourced, unverifiable material and rewrite it neutrally. Le Sanglier des Ardennes (talk) 21:46, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Include the exceptions
As the list includes nearly every monarch, I think it calls for mentioning the few exceptions. I added George V. I think George VI might be another citable exception. Both might assume, post marriage. Noting: In modern times the word "mistress" is used primarily to refer to the female lover of a man who is married to another woman; in the case of an unmarried man, it is usual to speak of a "girlfriend" or "partner". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:35, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Merge Proposal
I propose merging List of English royal mistresses into English and British royal mistress. As this content is already covered here in greater detail. EmilySarah99 (talk) 08:32, 18 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Should the merge go forward, I suggest changing the name of the page to 'mistresses' and restructure. EmilySarah99 (talk) 08:37, 18 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Given that no-one's objected, I think you can just do it. Celia Homeford (talk) 12:39, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Celia Homeford thanks. nothing like a project to start the new year off. EmilySarah99 (talk) 12:57, 2 January 2024 (UTC)