7. Edward VII had a private room in his favorite whorehouse
Albert Edward, who became King Edward VII, was a disappointment to his prim and proper parents, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. Nicknamed Bertie, he had his first sex scandal at age 16, with a prostitute. On the way back home from chastising Bertie, his father caught pneumonia, which did him in. For the next four decades, Queen Victoria blamed Bertie for killing her beloved husband and tried to keep him from succeeding her on the 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.
While waiting, Bertie became a notorious libertine. Whether cheap hookers, aristocratic ladies, courtesans, discrete liaisons, notorious affairs, or wife-swapping orgies, Bertie was down. He liked prostitutes so much, that he had a private permanent room in his favorite Parisian whorehouse, decorated with his coat of arms, and housing a specially designed chair, named siege d’amour. By the 1890s, middle-aged Bertie was fat and out of shape, so he had the heavy-duty love chair custom made to let him have sex without crushing his partners. It also positioned them just right for access, with minimal exertion and contortions on his part.