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Bizarre British Monarchy Facts That Sound Fake

Khalid Elhassan September 13, 2023 32 min

Monarch - England's royal swans — England's royal swans. The New York Times

This Monarch Was a Total Freak

Queen Victoria tried hard and did her best to keep Prince Albert from the throne, but after a 64-year-reign, she finally died in 1901. After a long wait that he thought would never end, Bertie became King Edward VII at age 60. In his decades-long wait to succeed his mother as monarch, Bertie became notorious for his relentless quest to gratify his sexual appetites. Whether cheap hookers or top notch French aristocratic ladies and courtesans, and from discrete liaisons to well publicized affairs with famous actresses to wife-swapping o-r-g-i-e-s, Bertie was insatiable.

British King Edward VII’s custom made sex chair. Edwardian Promenade

He was a big fan of Paris’ elite brothels, especially its most exclusive w-h-o-r-e-house, 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 love chair, named siege d’amour, which he installed in his w-h-o-r-e-house room. By the 1890s, Bertie was an obese, middle-aged, and out of shape man. 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.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.