Are you bored by history books that only focus on battles and laws? This book solves that problem by showing that what happens in the royal bedroom is often more important than what happens in the-council chamber. Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens is a chronological and gossipy exposé that argues the private sexual antics of British monarchs—from their mistresses and fetishes to their fertility and orientation—have always been public, political, and powerful forces that shaped the history of the nation.
The book is a comprehensive narrative, not a formal academic study, so it relies on a vast compilation of historical anecdotes, diary entries, and contemporary reports rather than new, primary-source case studies. Its evidence is the sheer volume of recurring scandals, from Henry VIII‘s quest for an heir to the abdication of Edward VIII for his sexually-liberated lover, all used to prove that a monarch’s libido is a matter of state.
Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens is best for Casual history buffs, royal-watching enthusiasts, and anyone who prefers their history scandalous, juicy, and entertaining. It’s the perfect “guilty pleasure” read for a long flight. Not for: Serious academic historians, students looking for a citable source, or readers who are easily offended by graphic details and a highly irreverent, tabloid-like tone.
Table of Contents
Overview
When we think of royal history, our minds often jump to crowns, castles, and constitutions. We picture the grand narratives of war, religion, and empire. But what if the real story, the one that truly changed the course of nations, was happening behind the locked doors of the royal bedchamber? This is the tantalizing premise of Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens of England by Nigel Cawthorne.
This book strips away the ermine robes to reveal the very human, and often very scandalous, flesh-and-blood desires that have driven monarchs for centuries. It’s a deep dive into the royal mistresses, the illegitimate children, the secret lovers, and the political turmoil that erupted from the most private of royal habits.
Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens of England is more than just a collection of sordid tales; it’s a re-framing of history where the siring of an heir is more critical than the signing of a treaty.
1. Introduction
The book is Sex Lives of the Kings & Queens of England, written by Nigel Cawthorne. This edition was published in Great Britain in 2012 by Prion Books, an imprint of the Carlton Publishing Group. The text itself has been revised multiple times since its first publication in 1994, reflecting its enduring popularity.
Nigel Cawthorne is not a traditional academic historian; he is a prolific journalist and author who, according to his own website, runs a “book-writing factory.” He has written over 150 books on a vast array of subjects, from true crime to military history.
His Sex Lives series, which also includes volumes on popes, U.S. presidents, and great dictators, is one of his most popular. This background is key to understanding the book’s style: it’s not a stuffy academic paper but a fast-paced, “irreverent and gossipy” (according to Goodreads reviews) piece of popular history designed to entertain and inform a general audience.
The book dives into the subject with a journalistic flair for the sensational, presenting centuries of royal history as one long, unbroken chain of sexual misbehavior.
The book’s central thesis is stated clearly in its introduction: public fascination with the private lives of royals is “nothing new”, and it’s not just “mere prurience”.
Cawthorne argues that these private affairs have always had massive public consequences.
He states that “throughout history the sleeping partners of a reigning monarch could be a matter of life or death”. Royal marriages were the basis of political alliances, and the “siring of an heir to the throne could make the difference between a period of political stability and a civil war”.
Therefore, the Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens is, in fact, a history of national security, foreign policy, and domestic stability, all told through the lens of the royal libido.
2. Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens Summary
This is where the book truly delivers, providing a comprehensive, chronological romp through centuries of royal scandals. It’s an extended summary that proves the main points of Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens by showing, dynasty by dynasty, how sex shaped the throne.
The Tudors: Hal the Horny and the Virgin Queen
The book fittingly kicks off with the most famous royal lecher of all: Henry VIII.
Cawthorne, however, quickly adds a fascinating caveat to his reputation. He notes that Henry VIII “was not the sexual athlete that his reputation suggests” and, ironically, “is the only British king to have had more wives than mistresses”. His problem wasn’t an uncontrollable libido, but a desperate, dynastic need for a male heir, which led him to break with the Catholic Church and fundamentally alter English history.
His first marriage to Catherine of Aragon failed on this point. His infatuation with Anne Boleyn is legendary, and Cawthorne includes details from Henry’s “passionate love letters”, where he “even eulogized her ‘sweet duckies [breasts] I trust soon to kiss’”.
But when Anne also “gave birth – to a daughter, Elizabeth”, her fate was sealed. Anne’s unpopularity at court and her own complaints about the King’s performance—she told her sister-in-law “that he possessed neither skill nor virility”—led to her downfall on trumped-up charges of adultery, with Henry boasting “that she had slept with a hundred men”.
His marriage to Jane Seymour was brief, producing the long-sought-after son before her death. This was followed by the disastrous political match with Anne of Cleves. The King’s reaction was famously one of revulsion; he complained “he could never in her company be provoked and steered to know her carnally” and, protesting his own virility, noted he’d had “a number of nocturnal emissions during this period” anyway.
The most tragic story is that of his fifth wife, the teenaged Catherine Howard. She had a history, having been “procured… to his vicious purpose” by a man named Francis Dereham. Her own description was explicit: “finally, he lay with me naked and used me in such sort as a man doth his wife many and sundry times”.
When Henry learned she had replicated this behavior with other courtiers like Thomas Culpepper, the “abominable, base, carnal, voluptuous and vicious life” she was accused of led her, too, to the executioner’s block.
The children of Henry VIII were, unsurprisingly, deeply affected.
Mary I‘s reign was marked by her fanatical Catholicism and a tragic “phantom pregnancy”; she was actually suffering from dropsy, “the disease that was about to kill her”. Then came Elizabeth I, “the Virgin Queen, who was, in all probability, not a virgin at all”. As a teenager, she had been involved in “boisterous” romps with Thomas Seymour, her stepfather, who would enter her room in his nightshirt and “pat her on the behind”.
Her great love, however, was Robert Dudley.
Their closeness was an open scandal, especially after the mysterious death of Dudley’s wife, Amy, which “effectively ruled out Dudley as a husband”. Despite this, Elizabeth kept him close, famously flying into rages when he toyed with other ladies. She entertained other suitors, but never married. Cawthorne suggests this had political reasons, but also notes the “colourful rumours” that “her genitals were deformed or even that she was a hermaphrodite”.
The Queen herself once complained of being “of barren stock”, a statement that, as Cawthorne slyly notes, implies she must have “slept with at least one of her many suitors” to know that for a fact.
The Stuarts: From Homosexual Kings to the “Merry Monarch”
The book highlights that James I was far from the first homosexual king.
He was preceded by figures like William Rufus, whose court was full of “enervated and effeminate” men, and Edward II, whose open affection for Piers Gaveston was so blatant that at his own wedding feast, “Edward and Gaveston caressed each other so openly that Isabella’s uncles left in disgust”. This relationship led directly to civil war and Edward’s gruesome execution, where a “red-hot poker had been forced into his rectum”.
James I continued this tradition with gusto.
He was famously “sladdered in his mouth” (slobbered) by his lovers. His first great favorite was his 30-year-old cousin Esmé Stuart, whom the 13-year-old king “embraced… in a most amorous manner” upon their first meeting.
But his most famous love was George Villiers, whom he nicknamed “Steenie” after St. Stephen, who was said to have the “face of an angel”. James’s affection was paternal as well as sexual; he wrote to Villiers and his new wife, “The Lord of Heaven sent you a sweet and blithe awakening… that I may have sweet bedchamber boys to play with me”.
His devotion was total, writing to Buckingham, “I had rather live banished in any part of the world with you than live a sorrowful widow’s life”.
This brings us to the “Merry Monarchs” chapter, focusing on Charles II and James II.
The Restoration court of Charles II was, according to Samuel Pepys, “nothing almost but bawdy from top to bottom”. Charles’s personal motto was, “God will never damn a man for allowing himself a little pleasure”, and he took this to heart, siring at least seventeen official mistresses. His first sexual experience was at fifteen, with his wet nurse.
His most famous mistresses defined the era.
First was the “beautiful but promiscuous” Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine. She amassed a “huge fortune” and was so voracious that the poet Rochester wrote, “She’ll still drudge on in tasteless vice / As if she sinn’d for exercise”. Then came Louise de Keroualle, a French spy sent by Louis XIV “thinking it would do no harm to have an agent in the King of England’s bed”. But the most beloved was Nell Gwyn, the “pretty, witty Nell” who came from a brothel.
She was famously down-to-earth, securing titles for her “little bastards”. Her most celebrated moment came when her coach was attacked by a mob mistaking her for the Catholic Louise; Nell stuck her head out the window and cried, “Pray good people be civil, I am the Protestant whore”, turning the crowd’s jeers to laughter.
Charles’s brother, James II, was just as promiscuous, but with famously less taste.
Charles himself once remarked, “I do not believe there are two men who love women more than you and I do, but my brother, devout as he is, loves them more”. He settled on Catherine Sedley, who was witty but no beauty. She herself remarked on her appeal: “It cannot be for my beauty, for he must see I have none, and it cannot be my wit, for he has not enough to know I have any”.
The book explains this was his undoing. When his Catholic wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son, Protestant lords “claimed that the child was illegitimate” and had been “smuggled into the Queen’s bed in a warming pan”.
This (false) scandal led directly to the “Glorious Revolution” that cost him the throne.
The Hanoverians: Elephants, Maypoles, and a “Randy Regent”
The book details how the Hanoverian dynasty brought a new, coarser flavor of scandal to England.
George I arrived with his two mistresses, Ehrengard von Schulenburg and the Baroness von Kielmannsegg. The British public, used to the likes of Nell Gwyn, was amused by this “uncommon a seraglio”. The two were cruelly nicknamed “the hop-pole and the elephant” or “the maypole and the Elephant and Castle”.
George II was a different case.
He was deeply in love with his wife, Caroline of Ansbach, and they would “spend every afternoon making love”. But this didn’t stop him from taking mistresses, as he felt “it was his royal duty”. He would provide his wife with graphic, “graphic accounts of the seduction” of his new lovers, assuring her, “I know you will love Madame Walmoden, because she loves me”. On her deathbed, Queen Caroline begged him not to remarry. As he “wiped the tears from his eyes, he replied: ‘No, I shall have mistresses’”.
The dynasty’s most infamous member was George IV, the “Randy Regent”.
Leigh Hunt described him as “a violator of his word, a libertine head over heels in debt and disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties” (a comment that landed Hunt in jail for libel) . He had countless affairs and “might also have sired Lord Melbourne”. His one true love was Maria Fitzherbert, a Catholic widow whom he illegally married in secret.
When he was forced into an official marriage with Caroline of Brunswick to pay off his debts, he was so drunk he “spent his wedding night lying in the grate”. He later tried to divorce her, leading to a public trial where Caroline became a bizarrely popular hero. His final mistress was Lady Conyngham, with whom he shared a “generously proportioned” physique; a scandalsheet wrote of them “tickling the fat about each other’s hips”.
Yet, when he died, he gave instructions “that he was to be buried with ‘the picture of my beloved wife, my Maria Fitzherbert, suspended around my neck”.
The Victorians: “Mrs Brown” and “Edward the Caresser”
The book moves to Queen Victoria, often seen as the epitome of moral virtue.
Cawthorne, however, highlights the scandals around her. She was “hissed at” by the public early in her reign for her cruel handling of the Lady Flora Hastings affair, a lady-in-waiting whom Victoria wrongly accused of being pregnant, forcing a medical examination that “ruptured a tumour”. The “Bedchamber Crisis” also showed her iron will, when her “caprice of a girl of nineteen” about who her ladies-in-waiting would be brought down a government.
After her beloved Albert’s death, Victoria’s own “blameless” life came into question.
She began an intensely close relationship with her Scottish gillie, John Brown.
He was her “constant companion”, and the relationship was so intimate “there were rumours that they had secretly married and the newspapers referred to her as ‘Mrs Brown’”. After Brown’s death, her Indian servant, Abdul Karim, or “Munshi”, assumed a similar role, further scandalizing the court.
Her son, Edward VII (“Bertie”), was a “constant disappointment”.
His “licentious nature” was revealed at 19 when his fellow officers “hid a naked young woman, an actress called Nellie Clifden, in his bed”. This “squalid debauch” (as Gladstone called it) was said to have hastened his father Albert’s death. As Prince of Wales, he became the ultimate playboy. He had a “love-seat” (a siege d’amour) specially designed at his favorite Paris brothel, Le Chabanais, to “accommodate two ladies at once”.
He had a string of high-profile mistresses.
These included Lillie Langtry, “the Jersey Lillie”, whom he paraded so openly that he “caused a scandal by kissing her in full view of everyone on the dance-floor at Maxim’s”. He also had a long-term affair with Daisy, Countess of Warwick, who was known as “My own adored Daisy wife” in his letters.
His final and most famous mistress was Alice Keppel, who was installed as the maîtresse en titre (official mistress). At his coronation, a special box “above the chancel was reserved for the King’s mistresses”, which was cruelly nicknamed “The King’s loose-box”.
When he was dying, his wife, Queen Alexandra, “gave orders that her husband’s mistress should be sent for immediately”, a final act of grace.
The Windsors: Abdication and the “Annus Horribilis”
The book argues that Edward VIII‘s (or David’s) obsession with Wallis Simpson was “purely sexual”.
His previous mistress, Thelma Furness, had complained that “he was very poorly endowed and a lacklustre sexual performer”. Wallis, however, had a unique skill set. Cawthorne alleges that during her time in China, she was “taught ‘perverse practices’” and “learned Fang Chung, an Ancient Chinese erotic art“.
This technique, which “was also useful for men who suffered from premature ejaculation” (by applying “firm pressure between the urethra and the anus”), gave her a complete and total hold over him.
Cawthorne also notes the Prince “had always been a repressed foot fetishist” and Wallis “indulged his fantasy completely”. This sexual dependency, the book argues, “was enough to make any man give up the throne”.
The modern era is defined by the breakdown of royal marriages in what the Queen famously called the “annus horribilis” of 1992.
Princess Margaret‘s life was one of public scandal, from her doomed love for the divorced Peter Townsend to her marriage to the “frequently away” Earl of Snowdon, which led to retaliatory affairs. She “took up with Roddy Llewellyn, a man seventeen years her junior”, and the couple was “pictured together on the West Indian island of Mustique”, which finally led to her divorce.
The main event, of course, was the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
The book details the “deep rift between Diana and her husband” from the start. Charles was still close to his old flame, Camilla Parker-Bowles, whom he called “Gladys” and who called him “Fred”. The publication of the “Camillagate” tapes and the “Squidgygate” tapes (between Diana and James Gilbey) ended the marriage. The final act was Diana’s famous television interview, where she “confirmed that James Hewitt had been her lover”.
Cawthorne points out the gravity of this: “By admitting adultery, she was confessing treason – still a capital offence in Great Britain”. The book also details Prince Andrew’s “Randy Andy” antics and Fergie’s “toe-sucking” scandal with Johnny Bryan, as well as Princess Anne’s divorce following allegations her husband “had fathered a love-child”.
The book concludes by arguing that the modern royals are no different from their ancestors; the only change is that “technical advances have made the global media network impossible to control”.
Kinky Queens
Here is a brief summary of Chapter 3, “The Kinky Queens.”
This chapter focuses on the reigns and private lives of Henry VIII’s two daughters, Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I, contrasting their different approaches to sex, love, and marriage.
Queen Mary I
The chapter suggests Mary I may have had warped attitudes towards relationships due to her father’s actions[cite: 303]. Before her marriage, she surrounded herself with women, showing particular devotion to her handmaiden Jane Dormer.
Her marriage to Philip of Spain was a political and religious alliance, not a passionate one[cite: 310]. Philip, ten years her junior, was unimpressed with his bride and her court, finding the Englishwomen “downright ugly”. Mary’s reign was marked by two phantom (or hysterical) pregnancies; the symptoms of the second were actually from dropsy, the illness that killed her.
Queen Elizabeth I
The book posits that the “Virgin Queen” was “in all probability, not a virgin at all”. It mentions rumors that she was pregnant at sixteen by Thomas Seymour, her stepfather.
Her central relationship was with Robert Dudley, whom she was “hopelessly in love with”. This affair was a major scandal, especially after Dudley’s wife, Amy, was found dead at the bottom of a staircase. The scandal effectively “ruled out Dudley as a husband”.
Despite this, Elizabeth kept Dudley close, though she also entertained numerous other suitors to secure political alliances, including the French Duke of Alençon, whom she called her “pet ‘frog’”. She ultimately never married, leading to “colourful rumours” that “her genitals were deformed or even that she was a hermaphrodite”. The book notes that Elizabeth herself complained of being “of barren stock,” which suggests she “must have slept with at least one of her many suitors” to know this.
Mary Queen of Scots
The chapter briefly contrasts Elizabeth’s discretion with the “indiscreet” love life of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, Mary’s life was filled with scandal, including the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley, followed by her abduction, rape, and subsequent marriage to the main suspect, Lord Bothwell.
3. Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens: The 10 Shocking Scandals That Changed History
1. Edward the Confessor’s Chastity and the Norman Conquest
King Edward the Confessor was so pious that he remained chaste even within his marriage. While this earned him sainthood, it also meant he produced no heir. This created a power vacuum upon his death, leading directly to the dispute between Harold of Wessex and William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, which culminated in the Norman Conquest of 1066.
2. Henry VI’s Impotence and the Wars of the Roses
Henry VI was a prudish and possibly impotent king. When his wife, Margaret of Anjou, announced she was pregnant, he collapsed. Court gossip insisted the child was the bastard of the Duke of Somerset. This scandal surrounding the legitimacy of the heir helped Edward IV seize the throne and was a key factor in the dynastic conflict known as the Wars of the Roses.
3. Henry VIII’s “Great Matter” and the English Reformation
Henry VIII’s desperation for a male heir, combined with his infatuation with Anne Boleyn, led him to seek an annulment from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. When the Pope refused, Henry broke with the Catholic Church, declared his marriage to Catherine null and void, and established the Church of England, fundamentally changing the course of English religion and politics.
4. The Execution of Anne Boleyn
After failing to provide Henry VIII with a son (giving birth only to the future Queen Elizabeth), Anne Boleyn fell from favor. To free himself to marry Jane Seymour, Henry had Anne investigated. Rumors spread that she had taken lovers , and Henry boasted she had slept with a hundred men.
She was executed on charges of adultery and incest, a shocking demonstration of royal tyranny and the lethal consequences of failing to satisfy the king’s dynastic (and personal) desires.
5. The Nine Days’ Reign of Lady Jane Grey
As the Protestant Edward VI lay dying, his advisors plotted to maintain their power by altering the succession. They married Lady Jane Grey to Guildford Dudley and, after forcing the marriage to be consummated, persuaded the young king to name her his heir. This attempt to bypass Henry VIII’s Catholic daughter, Mary, failed. Mary swept to power, and Jane and her husband were arrested and eventually executed.
6. Mary Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley
The marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley quickly soured. After Darnley was murdered in a terrific explosion (though his body showed signs of strangulation), suspicion immediately fell on Lord Bothwell. Mary’s decision to marry Bothwell just three months later—after he abducted and raped her—scandalized the nation, leading to her forced abdication, imprisonment, and eventual execution in England.
7. Edward II, Piers Gaveston, and a Red-Hot Poker
King Edward II was openly homosexual, and his relationship with his companion Piers Gaveston outraged the court. Edward and Gaveston caressed each other so openly at the king’s wedding feast that his new wife’s uncles left in disgust. The barons’ hatred for Gaveston led to his exile and eventual execution.
Edward’s affairs eventually led to his own wife, Isabella, and her lover, Mortimer, deposing him. He was later found dead, with rumors circulating that he had been murdered with a red-hot poker forced into his rectum.
8. The “Warming Pan” Baby and the Glorious Revolution
When James II’s Catholic wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son in 1688, it secured a Catholic line of succession. Protestant lords, desperate to prevent this, claimed the child was illegitimate and had been smuggled into the Queen’s bed in a warming pan.
Although there was no truth to the rumor, it served as powerful propaganda. It was a key justification for inviting the Protestant William of Orange to invade, forcing James II to flee and securing the “Glorious Revolution”.
9. George IV’s Disastrous Marriage and the “Queen’s Trial”
The Prince Regent (later George IV) was forced into an arranged marriage with Caroline of Brunswick, whom he instantly despised. He refused to sleep with her again after the birth of their daughter.
When he became king, he tried to divorce her by accusing her of adultery with her Italian courier, Bartolomeo Pergami. The resulting public trial, where intimate details of their lives were exposed, brought the monarchy into disrepute and caused a constitutional crisis.
10. The Abdication of Edward VIII
King Edward VIII’s relationship with Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American, created an unprecedented constitutional crisis. The Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, argued that the British people would not accept her as Queen.
Faced with the choice between the woman he loved and the throne, Edward VIII chose to abdicate on December 11, 1936, changing the line of succession and thrusting his shy, stammering brother (George VI) into the role of king on the eve of war.
4. Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens of England Analysis
My assessment of Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens is that it absolutely succeeds in its purpose, but its purpose is not what a serious historian would ever claim.
The book’s evaluation of content is a mixed bag. Cawthorne does, as he promises, connect sexual behavior to political outcomes. The argument that Henry VIII’s libido and Anne Boleyn’s pregnancy led to the English Reformation is standard history. The link between the “warming pan” scandal and the fall of James II is also well-established. Where the book’s arguments become weaker is in the attribution of modern, psychological motives to historical figures without strong evidence.
The book does not fulfill its purpose as a serious historical work, but it wildly succeeds as a piece of “popular history” or, perhaps more accurately, “historical gossip.”
As noted by critics of his other works, Cawthorne is a journalist, not an academic. His writing style is “engaging” and “journalistic rather than academic” (according to Forage.com). This is clear in the text. There is not a single footnote or academic-style citation in the entire book.
We are asked to take his word for everything, from the specific dialogue of a 17th-century courtier to the claim that Wallis Simpson learned “Fang Chung” in China. This is the book’s greatest weakness; it’s a “fleshed-out Wikipedia entry,” as one critic of his work put it, that treats rumor and fact with equal weight.
5. Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
My pleasant experience with this book was immediate: it’s incredibly readable and fun.
I found myself breezing through centuries of history that are often presented in the driest possible terms. Cawthorne has a real talent for finding the most salacious, humorous, and humanizing details. The story of Nell Gwyn shouting “I am the Protestant whore!” is a perfect example of how he brings a character to life.
Another compelling strength is the book’s central theme, which, when I stepped back, I realized was profoundly true.
History is shaped by these “small” human desires. The book does an excellent job of showing that for a king, “siring of an heir” wasn’t a private matter, but the single most important function of his office. The book’s innovation is to gather all these anecdotes in one place, creating a relentless, centuries-long narrative of misbehavior that is both hilarious and slightly terrifying. It makes you realize that, for all our modern pearl-clutching, the “annus horribilis” of 1992 was just another Tuesday for the Plantagenets or Stuarts.
Weaknesses
My unpleasant or negative experience with the book was a growing sense of repetition and numbness.
After the 50th “maid of honour,” “goggle-eyed whore”, or “illegitimate child,” the scandals begin to blur. The Hanoverian section, in particular, felt like a confusing soup of Georges and their equally dull mistresses. It can feel like reading a 300-page tabloid—entertaining at first, then slightly sickening.
The biggest weakness, as I’ve noted, is the complete lack of sourcing.
This is what separates popular history from “pulp history.” Where did he get the story about Edward II’s execution? Is the claim about Wallis Simpson’s sexual training based on a credible biography, or a throwaway rumor from a disgruntled courtier? We are never told. The book presents “court gossip” and hard fact as equals.
This lack of academic rigor means that while the book is a fantastic read, you walk away with a collection of great stories, but you can’t be entirely sure which ones are true.
6. Reception and Influence
When Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens of England was first published in 1994, it became part of a very successful, internationally bestselling series for Nigel Cawthorne.
The book’s reception reflects its dual nature. On platforms like Goodreads, readers praise it for being a “lighthearted,” “humorous,” and “irreverent” page-turner. It’s clear that it has been highly influential in the “popular history” market, tapping into the public’s endless fascination with the British monarchy, a fascination that reached a fever pitch in the 1990s during the scandals of Charles and Diana.
However, the book and Cawthorne’s work in general are heavily criticized in academic circles.
As his Wikipedia page notes, his work is often seen as sensationalist and poorly researched. Critics point to a “lack of academic background,” “poor editorial standards,” and “factual errors and oversimplifications.” It is the “historical equivalent of pulp fiction.” Its influence, therefore, is not on the study of history, but on the publishing of history, proving that a “gossipy” and accessible (if not entirely accurate) tone can sell millions of copies.
7. Comparison with Similar Other Works
The most direct competitors to Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens are:
- Sex with Kings (2004) by Eleanor Herman: This book covers almost identical ground, focusing on the “500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge” of royal mistresses. Herman’s book is also popular history but is generally regarded as being slightly better researched, though it still leans heavily into the gossip and scandal that makes Cawthorne’s book so popular.
- Princesses Behaving Badly (2013) by Linda Rodríguez McRobbie: This book shares Cawthorne’s irreverent, feminist-leaning tone, debunking the “fairy-tale” endings of real-life princesses. It’s less comprehensive but shares the same spirit of exposing the “real” history behind the royal image.
Compared to these, Cawthorne’s book is more encyclopedic and relentless. While Herman or McRobbie might focus on a few key stories, Cawthorne’s is a “more-is-more” approach, a sheer data-dump of centuries of scandal.
8. Conclusion
So, what’s the final verdict on Sex Lives of the Kings and Queens of England?
It’s a book that is, without question, a wildly entertaining ride.
It delivers exactly what it promises on the cover, in spades. If you are someone who finds traditional history to be a cure for insomnia, this is the antidote. It’s the perfect book for a reader who loves The Crown or Bridgerton and wants the “R-rated” version of what really happened behind the scenes.
I would highly recommend this book to a general audience looking for a fun, scandalous, and easy-to-digest overview of royal history.
It’s a fantastic beach read or travel companion. However, I would not recommend it to a history student, an academic, or anyone looking for a nuanced, scholarly, or fact-checked account of the British monarchy. Treat it as a brilliantly told collection of historical rumors, and you’ll have a wonderful time.
Just don’t quote it in a term paper.