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. Queen 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. 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.
Alfred the Great may have had an illegitimate son, Osferth , by a royal mistress. Osferth was described as a relative in King Alfred's will, and he attested charters in a high position until A charter of King Edward's reign described him as the king's brother β mistakenly according to Keynes and Lapidge, but in the view of Janet Nelson , he probably was an illegitimate son of King Alfred. He was Edward's only son by his first consort, Ecgwynn. Very little is known about Ecgwynn, and she is not named in any contemporary source.
Medieval chroniclers gave varying descriptions of her rank: one described her as an ignoble consort of inferior birth, while others described her birth as noble.
Edgar, King of the English had children by three consorts. Almost all historians accept that he married the third one, but some question whether he married the first one; and others, the second. The name of his first consort, who was the mother of his eldest son, Edward the Martyr , was not recorded until after the Norman Conquest.
