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The Town That Got Away With Murder and Other Largely Forgotten Historic Events

Khalid Elhassan November 23, 2019 33 min

5. French Royals Had Sex In Public

Marie Antoinette. All That Is Interesting

During France’s Ancien Regime, royal sex was often a public and political affair. Indeed, across Europe, royals’ sex lives were matters of state. Since the future of the dynasty and the realm depended on lineage, providing as much information as possible about how that lineage came about and was perpetuated for future generations was a political necessity. Thus, several attendants were usually present in the royal bedroom on wedding nights, to witness that things had gone the way they should.

If and when the royal coitus produced the desired result and the queen got pregnant, she could wave goodbye to whatever little privacy she had for the next nine months. When queen Marie Antoinette got pregnant, her chambers were shared not only by the king and medical staff but also by just about every court favorite. When she gave birth, the room was packed with so many spectators, that she passed out from the heat.

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.