Passions ran high in Victorian times, and nowhere were they higher than in royal circles.

Irish aristocrat Lady Olivia Fitzpatrick was a sexual predator who was expelled from the royal court by Queen Victoria for trying to seduce her husband, Prince Albert. But soon Olivia returned; her eyes were now fixed on Victoria’s son, the Prince of Wales. He was 17 years younger than her.

That didn’t happen either – but undaunted, Lady Olivia pushed her teenage daughter Patsy into the voluptuous Prince’s path.

At the time, Patsy (born Mary Adelaide Virginia Eupatoria FitzPatrick) was only 16 years old, and the prince was 29, and he should have known better. But passion was Edward’s thing.

Although married at age 23, the future King Edward VII began having an affair with a woman named Mary Ross within a year, and according to historian Anthony J. Camp, Edward already had at least 13 mistresses before Patsy. was brought before the royal court.

He was unstoppable. During his lifetime, there would be many more noblewomen more than willing to submit to his unquenchable lust, but Patsy was the youngest.

And so, at the encouragement of the teenager described as ‘sexually lawless’, he took Patsy’s virginity.

Irish socialite Mary ‘Patsy’ Cornwallis-West became the mistress of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, until she was replaced by Lillie Langtry and Alice Keppel, Queen Camilla’s great-grandmother.

Mary Cornwallis-West (1958 – 1920) with a young girl, possibly one of her daughters, circa 1880. The Prince of Wales is said to be the father of at least one of her children.

The Prince of Wales, son of Queen Victoria and future King Edward VII, had an affair with ‘Patsy’ Fitzpatrick when he was 16 and already had 13 mistresses before he met her.

The only rule in the Victorian era was ‘thou shalt not be discovered’ and so a plan had to be quickly devised by the wily Lady Olivia that would allow the Prince access to his daughter before tongues began to wag.

Unknowingly, William Cornwallis-West, 19 years older than Patsy, had his home at Ruthin Castle in Denbighshire, a comfortable journey away from Edward’s favorite country house where he often stayed, making him an ideal husband.

And when William was traveling, the prince would come to visit him.

There was something extra special about Patsy that kept Edward coming back for more, year after year. She exuded sexual appeal with her golden hair, hourglass-shaped body and ‘apple blossom-like skin’.

Socially, she crested a wave after marriage (her husband was Lord Lieutenant of Denbighshire) and even after Edward became king the couple still met in secret.

Irish socialite Mary ‘Patsy’ Cornwallis-West became the mistress of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, until she was replaced by Lillie Langtry and Alice Keppel, Queen Camilla’s great-grandmother.

Patsy’s mother, Lady Olivia, came up with a plan that would allow the Prince access to her daughter before tongues started wagging. Unwittingly feature William Cornwallis-West, 19 years older than Patsy

William’s family home was Ruthin Castle in Denbighshire, a convenient drive from the country house that Edward frequently visited.

Encouraged by her ruthlessly ambitious mother, Patsy used her proximity to the throne to arrange advantageous marriages for her children; One of her daughters married the fabulously wealthy Duke of Westminster, another married a German prince, and her son married Lady Randolph Churchill. as the second husband of wartime prime minister Winston Churchill.

It is said that the father of at least one of these children was the King himself.

But as the passion in her relationship with Edward waned – she was replaced as his mistress first by the actress Lillie Langtry and then finally by Alice Keppel, the great-grandmother of the current Queen Camilla – Patsy sought love elsewhere.

As World War I ravaged Europe, Patrick Barrett, a young working-class soldier, was crippled at home, suffering from wounds and shell shock. Of the 3,000 men in his regiment, Royal Welch (NB correct spelling) Fusiliers, all but 80 died in the first six months of the war.

Patsy also used her royal connections to make other advantageous matches for her other children, and her daughter Mary Cornwallis-West married Prince Henry von Pless, one of Germany’s wealthiest noblemen.

As the passion in Patsy’s relationship with Edward waned, she was replaced as his mistress by actress Lillie Langtry.

After Lillie Langtry came the famous Alice Keppel, great-grandmother of Queen Camilla.

When ‘sexually lawless’ Patsy looked elsewhere for love, she fell in love with an ordinary soldier, which escalated into a high-profile and devastating sex scandal that destroyed both Patsy and her husband.

Patsy’s husband, William, was an honorary colonel of the Fusiliers, so the young soldier was invited to come and recuperate at the family estate.

And ‘sexually lawless’ Patsy fell in love with him. She was 59 and Barrett was only 25, and what happened next escalated into a high-profile and devastating sex scandal that would ultimately destroy Patsy and her husband.

It was scandalous enough for a woman in her position to chase an ordinary soldier. The fact that the soldier was from her husband’s regiment made the situation worse; she was called the ‘aristocratic whore’. And when the full story was revealed, it turned out that Patsy had bombarded the unworldly young man with letters, poems, and promises of promotion; The man was too weak to resist her amorous onslaught.

Using his influence – as the upper classes could do in those days – he promoted Barrett to the rank of officer. But in those class-obsessed days, Barrett’s blue-collar roots made him an alien figure in the civil servant’s shuffle, and soon stories began to circulate that he had seduced a woman old enough to be his mother to get the promotion he didn’t deserve.

The story was the opposite, of course, but no one believed Barrett was the innocent party. Deeply embarrassed by malicious gossip, she called off the relationship, not anticipating the scandal that her rejection would trigger.

Humiliated, Patsy went back to the higher-ranking officers she had persuaded to make Barrett an officer and demanded that they reinstate his promotion. In January 1917, at the height of the war, a Court of Inquiry was established to investigate the military’s meddling in its affairs and the story was made public.

The Cornwallis-Wests were then humiliated by the resulting publicity and the shame and disgrace that surrounded them, and within a few weeks they had Patsy’s husband murdered – he died that summer.

And once a king’s mistress and a society darling – whose husband called her “the most beautiful woman of the four kingdoms” – she, too, died at the age of 64.