Sex With Kings
Not too long ago I read the book Sex with Kings by Eleanor Herman. The book goes into detail about the mistresses the Kings of Europe once kept. This practice lasted several hundred years and the mistresses of kings were referred to as Royal Mistresses. These royal mistresses were expected to do what ever was necessary to make the king happy. That included sex, but it also included being the king's loyal confident and keeping the king happy in all matters of life. As a result, these royal mistresses were rewarded handsomely during their tenure with many having a place in the king's court.
The queen on the other hand was forced to suffer through life with a king for a husband that offered his mistress the best suites in the castle and adorned his mistress with the best jewels available. This usually left the queen in a second place role in the king's life. Although the royal mistress was provided a better life than the queen, the mistress could be dismissed at any point for any reason and the queen was secure in her position. For some of the women, life after being a royal mistress meant a life of ease with a stipend for life from the king. Most of these women were not so fortunate. For most, after being a royal mistress life could mean fleeing the country in the middle of the night with a carriage full of jewels or being banished to a convent or worse.
The European monarchs lasted around 500 years. To become king a son must be born from a royal father and a royal mother. Children of the king and royal mistresses were considered bastards with virtually no path to ever being considered royalty. As you can imagine, over the generations the royalty became inbred to the point of having visible signs both physically and mentally. Most of the royal children tended to be less attractive and less intelligent than the bastards produced between the king and his mistress.
A member of royalty to wed that was attractive and somewhat intelligent was hard to find. This wasn't a problem because weddings among royalty were arranged marriages used to form alliances between countries or to correct some problem between one royal family and another. Often the couple met only days before their royal wedding to finally see how unattractive their new spouse to be was.
All in all it was an entertaining book. Several days after finishing it there was some story in the political news that drew my mind back to the book. I don't remember the news story or who it involved, but it did get me thinking about the ideological inbreeding that has developed by those in our government. This ideological inbreeding has developed two camps that cannot even consider a rational idea from the other. As a result we tend to sit and nothing gets done by our royalty.
Maybe it's time we arrange a marriage or two to bridge the divide between our two warring groups of royalty in the U.S. government. The biggest example of this ideological inbreeding comes from our presidential campaigns for almost the last 40 years. George H. W. Bush was elected to be the 43rd Vice President of the United States. Since that election in 1980, either a Bush or a Clinton name has been at least in the running to be president if not on the ballot.
Obviously an arranged marriage between the Bush and Clinton families will be required. We should also look at arranging marriages with someone in Chuck Schumer's and Nancy Peloci's families, probably someone in Mitch McConnell's family for one of them. For the other, possibly someone from Chuck Grassley's family? Not sure, but these arranged marriages worked to resolve conflicts in the age of Monarchs, why not now?