King Edward VII’s Sexcapades
Today’s British tabloids would have had a field day with Albert Edward (1841 – 1910), who went on to reign as King Edward VII of the United Kingdom from 1901 until his death. He was no great shakes as a king, being a mediocrity both as a man and as a monarch. However, as a libertine, Edward VII shone, standing in stark contrast to his notoriously priggish mother, Queen Victoria, who lent her name to an uptight and prudish age.
Growing up, the then-Prince Albert, or “Bertie”, was a disappointment to his prim and proper parents, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. It started with Bertie’s first sex scandal, at age 16, with a prostitute. The queen was not amused. On the way back home from chastising Bertie for his wayward ways, his father caught pneumonia, which did him in. For the remaining four decades of her life, Queen Victoria blamed Bertie for killing her beloved husband and did all she could to keep him from succeeding her to the British throne.
She failed to get him removed from the line of succession, but often remarked that her longevity and long reign were due to her determination to outlive Bertie and prevent him from ever becoming king. She did her best, but after a 64-year reign, Victoria finally died in 1901, and after a long wait that he thought would never end, Bertie became king at age 60.
During the decades-long wait for becoming king, Bertie became notorious for his relentless quest to gratify his sexual appetites. It did not matter whether it was with cheap hookers or top-notch French aristocratic ladies and courtesans. From discrete liaisons to publicized affairs with famous actresses to wife-swapping orgies, Bertie was insatiable and down for it all.
He was a big fan of Paris’ elite brothels, especially its most exclusive whorehouse, La Chabanais. There, he had his own room, decorated with his coat of arms and furnished to his specific tastes. Those tastes included a specially designed chair, named siege d’amour, which he had installed in his whorehouse room. By the 1890s, Bertie had become an obese, middle-aged, and out-of-shape man. So he had the heavy-duty love chair custom made to enable him to have sex without crushing his partners, and also to position them just right for royal access, with minimal exertion and contortions on his part.