© Adobe Stock/AI generated
With a hereditary monarchy in Britain, the kings and queens of the United Kingdom have all tended to be preoccupied by one thing – having children. Marriages were judged by how quickly a royal couple became pregnant, and courtiers waited with bated breath to discover the gender of the monarch’s children. Royal wives were shamed for their inability to conceive or birth a living child. And while the creation and survival of legitimate royal children was a matter of interest for the public, so too was the fate of children who were born out of royal wedlock.
Many of Britain’s kings have fathered illegitimate children. In fact, it would be more pertinent to ask which of England’s historical kings did not have at least one child outside of their marriage. While there is no evidence that William the Conqueror (r.1066-87) or his son William II (r.1087 – 1100) had any children outside of their marriages, the majority of kings who came after them certainly did. Henry I (r.1100-35), England’s third king after the Norman Conquest, was the proud father of around 25 illegitimate children, making him the monarch with the most children born outside of wedlock. Charles II (r.1660-85) had at least 14 illegitimate offspring with a number of different women, and William IV (r.1830-37) fathered 10 children with his mistress of many years, Irish actress Dorothea Jordan.