20 Kings Who Hid Secret Wives, Lovers, And Children

Anne Boleyn was already pregnant when she and Henry VIII secretly married at Whitehall Palace in January 1533. The problem was that Henry was still legally married to Catherine of Aragon. Henry even lied to the priest performing the ceremony, telling him that permission had been granted by the pope. Ironically, Henry’s first marriage wasn’t annulled until May 23, 1533, months after he had already married Anne! Their daughter Elizabeth was born that September. Henry certainly wasn’t waiting around for the paperwork.

Crown Prince Pedro of Portugal fell in love with Inês de Castro while he was still married to his first wife, and their relationship continued after his wife died. Pedro lived secretly with Inês in Coimbra after 1345 until his father, King Afonso IV, had her assassinated in 1355, reportedly fearing the political influence of her powerful Castilian family. Years later, a much creepier version of the story emerged: Pedro supposedly had her corpse exhumed and set on a throne, with nobles forced to kiss her hand as their queen. However, this is a legend that only originated in a sixteenth-century play, and there is no mention of the event in contemporary chronicles. What Pedro did do was swear in Cantanhede in 1360, after becoming king, that he had secretly married Inês. If true, that would have made his murdered lover his lawful wife all along!

After Queen Maria Theresa died in July 1683, Louis secretly married his children’s former governess, Madame de Maintenon, in October 1683. The wedding took place at midnight, with no official record, and because of her lower social rank, the marriage was morganatic; so she was never crowned queen. (The king’s children with his earlier mistress, Madame de Montespan, were raised in secret across Paris and were legitimized, unlike Maintenon, who never gained royal status.)

Under the Royal Marriages Act 1772, it was illegal for George, Prince of Wales, to marry without the consent of the king, thus making any marriage he contracted without that consent void. Ironically, marrying a Catholic meant that George would lose the throne. On December 15, 1785, George secretly married Maria Fitzherbert but was able to get away with it because legally the marriage had no standing, so nothing happened. When asking for debt relief to Parliament, George denied his marriage to Maria.

In 1899, 65-year-old Leopold began a relationship with 16-year-old Caroline Lacroix, and fathered two sons with her. He funneled some of the wealth of the Congo Free State into private foundations to pay for Lacroix and evade Belgian Parliament, as well as to exclude his daughters from inheriting. In December 1909, he secretly married Lacroix, five days before his death. The marriage had no legal or royal status, because Belgian law required a civil ceremony first.

King Christian IV of Denmark secretly married Kirsten Munk in December 1615, after the death of his first wife. But because theirs was a morganatic, or “left-handed,” marriage between people of unequal social rank, Kirsten was not allowed to bear the title of queen. Their twelve children became Counts and Countesses of Schleswig-Holstein but were barred from the royal succession. The couple’s relationship ended in 1628 when Kirsten was banished from court after Christian discovered she was having an affair with a German captain.

In 1866, the married Tsar Alexander II of Russia began an affair with 18-year-old Princess Catherine Dolgorukov, who bore him four children (who were, of course, given no succession rights). In 1880, Alexander moved Catherine and their children into private apartments in the Winter Palace, directly above the apartments of his dying wife, Empress Maria Alexandrovna. Awkward doesn’t even begin to cover it. After the Empress died in June 1880, Alexander secretly married his longtime mistress and named her Princess Yurievsky.

Sigismund II Augustus, then Grand Duke of Lithuania and heir to the Polish throne, secretly married Barbara Radziwiłł in Vilnius in 1547. The Sejm, Poland’s parliament, opposed the union because it strengthened the already powerful Radziwiłł family and insisted that the marriage be annulled. Sigismund Augustus revealed the marriage in 1548 as he took the Polish throne, and Barbara was crowned queen in 1550. He never conceded to the Sejm’s wishes, but the next year Barbara died, likely of an illness, though unconfirmed rumors claimed that she had been poisoned. He certainly went through a lot just to keep his wife!

Carol II’s 1918 marriage to commoner Zizi Lambrino was a secret union that defied Romanian law, which banned royals’ marriages without the consent of the crown. It was annulled in 1919 after the crown prince deserted his post and was arrested on King Ferdinand’s orders. However, the marriage was judged legitimate after the fall of communism, after decades of trials about inheritance: the couple’s son, Carol Lambrino, had been born in January 1920, a year after the annulment had already taken effect.

In 1565, King Eric XIV of Sweden began an affair with Karin Månsdotter, a soldier’s daughter. Though diplomats searched abroad for a royal bride, Eric married Karin in secret in December 1567. In July 1568 Eric crowned Karin publicly as queen. The act was received as a personal insult by the status-conscious nobles of Sweden, and Eric’s own brothers rose in rebellion against him, and he was deposed within months.

While still married to Queen Frederika Louisa, Frederick William II of Prussia secretly married two other women: court lady Julie von Voß in 1787 and, after her death, Countess Sophie von Dönhoff in 1790. The church had approved both marriages, and the indebted Queen Frederika Louisa even gave her written consent in return for having her debts paid and her children’s inheritance rights secured. Talk about negotiating the terms of your husband’s other marriages! These unions produced three (not seven, contrary to some materials) children.

In October 1599, after the death of Henry IV’s previous mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées, his new mistress, Henriette d’Entragues, managed to get quite the promise from him. Henry agreed in writing that he would marry Henriette if she bore him a son, which she did in 1601. There was just one major problem: Henry had already married the wealthy Marie de’ Medici for monetary reasons. Henriette later used his written promise as leverage in a failed Spanish-backed conspiracy against Marie’s children in 1604, but was subsequently pardoned by Henry.

The “Royal Question,” a political crisis over King Leopold III’s return to the Belgian throne after World War II, was resolved in 1951 when Leopold abdicated. The struggle was caused in part by the king’s secret religious marriage to Lilian Baels on September 11, 1941, even though a monarch was supposed to have a civil marriage first. Belgians living under occupation were angry at the King’s apparent comfortable situation and were even more shocked when, in late 1941, it was learned that Lilian was pregnant. A civil marriage was hastily arranged in December 1941. Not exactly the best time for a secret royal wedding!

Victor Emmanuel II met Rosa Vercellana in 1847 and began a long relationship with her while he was still married to Queen Adelaide. During the Italian unification struggle, his Prime Minister, Cavour, objected to the relationship. After Queen Adelaide died in 1855, Rosa and her children with the king lived at La Mandria, an isolated hunting estate near Turin. In 1869, believing he was going to die, Victor Emmanuel secretly married Rosa. She was made Countess of Mirafiori, though never queen consort. Better late than never, I suppose!

In 1483, a bishop claimed that Edward IV had been previously bound in marriage to a woman named Eleanor Butler, and although this was contested, Richard III used the claim to make Edward’s children illegitimate. Edward’s secretive marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, a widowed commoner, on May 1, 1464, while the Earl of Warwick was negotiating a royal French marriage for the King, had also created problems. When the marriage was revealed in September 1464, an enraged Warwick eventually broke with Edward, allying with the Lancastrians to reignite the Wars of the Roses.

King Frederick VI of Denmark had a mistress/partner, Bente Frederikke Dannemand, for over thirty years while still married to Queen Marie Sophie. From 1805 the King set up Dannemand in a private residence near Amalienborg Palace and visited her daily. She bore him four surviving children, who in 1830 were raised into the nobility, but were nevertheless barred from ascending the throne.

King Alfonso XIII had two healthy children, including a son, Leandro, with actress Carmen Ruiz Moragas at a private mansion in Madrid between 1916 and 1931, but never publicly acknowledged the children, only providing them with support via intermediaries. This contrasted with the hemophiliac sons he fathered within his marriage. In 2003, Spanish courts confirmed that Leandro was the biological son of Alfonso XIII, but granted him nothing more than the family name Borbón.

While revolutionary propaganda depicted Louis XV’s secluded Parc-aux-Cerfs, a residence in the vicinity of Versailles, as a mass brothel, the reality was more modest. From approximately 1752 to 1768, Louis would sometimes visit in disguise as a Polish nobleman. Scholars believe that only one or two women lived at the estate at a time and would be secretly married to a provincial nobleman if they became pregnant; an estimated 8 to 15 children were raised under false names and outside of the royal register.

The future James II of England began a relationship with Anne Hyde, a commoner, who became pregnant in late 1659. James signed a secret marriage contract with her and married her at a midnight London wedding in September 1660. Hostile courtiers denounced Anne as socially inferior and demanded that James repudiate the marriage, but his brother, Charles II, ordered him to honor his vows. Anne died in 1671 after bearing eight children. Of them, two daughters survived to become queens: Mary II and Anne.

A 19th-century legend holds that George III married a Quaker, Hannah Lightfoot in about 1754. However, an 1866 court case showed that purported marriage certificates were forged to support a fraudulent inheritance claim. Rumors started to surface as soon as 1660 of Charles II’s secret marriage to Lucy Walter, mother of the Duke of Monmouth, but the King explicitly denied the rumor before the Privy Council in 1680 and never produced the supposed ‘Black Box’ containing evidence of such a marriage.

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