Reasons A Royal Mistress Was Taken
The primary reason a king would take a mistress seems to be the fact that royal marriages were rarely, if ever, based on love alone. Most often, English monarchs made a dynastic match, first for the production of heirs of royal blood and second for the treaties and huge dowry that often accompanied such brides. Compatibility was rarely considered in the contracting of these marriages.
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. This, added to the fact that often there was no physical attraction between the two royal partners, creates a situation which, to the sensibilities of the time, necessitated the establishment of a royal mistress.
Read more about this topic: English Royal Mistress
Famous quotes containing the words reasons, royal and/or mistress:
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—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
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“The lover never sees personal resemblances in his mistress to her kindred or to others. His friends find in her a likeness to her mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song of birds.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)