English and British royal mistresses

In the English or British court, a royal mistress is a woman who is the lover of a member of the royal family; specifically, the king. She may be taken either before or after his accession to the throne. Although it generally is only used of females, by extrapolation, the relation can cover any lover of the monarch, whether male or female. Elizabeth I is said to have had many male favourites, including Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, although it is not known whether the relationships were sexual or not.

Monarchs have had an incentive to take mistresses in that they generally made dynastic marriages of convenience, and there was often little love in them.

Doctors also believed until the relatively recent past that it was unsafe for a man to have sex with a pregnant woman, which was another factor in regards to a king's decision to look outside of his marriage for intimacy.

Beyond the physical relationship, the royal mistress has often exercised a profound influence over the king, extending even to affairs of state. Her relationship with the queen consort could be tense, although some wives appear to have felt little jealousy in the matter.

Some notable examples of English and/or British Kings that are generally agreed to have never taken mistresses include William I, Henry III, his son Edward I, Henry VII, and George III. The end of George III's reign coincides with the European-wide practice of kings taking official mistresses beginning to fall out of fashion in the early 19th century.