The Mistress

"These are not the short-term flings, the one-night stands, or the casual extramarital friends with benefits. They are long-term lovers who have spent years, sometimes decades, single and involved with married men. [...] This seems to be more typically a female variety of suffering, and it’s no accident that the epithets applied to them do not have masculine equivalents. [...] I have met plenty of men who were the lovers of married women (or married men, for that matter). But I have yet to meet a man who was single and gave his love to another man’s wife for thirty years, hoping that she would leave and come and make a family with him."

— Esther Perel, The State of Affairs

Basically the next level up from adultery, but not quite equal to a concubine. She is the usually long-term girlfriend of an already married man. Sometimes the affair is public, but just as often it is not.

The reasons can vary: the most common being that the husband just doesn't care enough for his wife, especially if they are in an Arranged Marriage. Sometimes it's actually expected within a culture, particularly for people of high rank (even if kept private). Sometimes the wife can even drive her husband to this, but just as often she can be a kind woman, or even a Hot Consort.

Some mistresses will be happy with their position, but others will want their lover to leave his wife and marry them. Occasionally, the latter could even lead to attempts to get rid of the wife. Needless to say, if the wife wasn't aware of her existence and finds out, the mistress is very likely to die at her hands, if the man isn't the one to die.

Crime Fiction stories often involve this trope, as it conveniently gives everyone involved a motive for murdering at least one of the Love Triangle. The more mistresses, the more potential red herrings/victims.

There are a lot of historical examples, because European aristocratic marriages were almost always purely political. It was generally accepted that the husband and (though less tolerated, if only because accidents could wreak havoc with the succession) wife would take lovers to provide the emotional fulfillment they may not be getting from their marriage. It was usually considered bad form to be conspicuous about it, but not always. In some countries, such as France, the royal mistress was even an official position; she was designated 'maîtresse-en-titre' and had her own special apartments. Formalizing and legitimizing it made things less awkward in public, and it also made it easier to keep tabs on any illegitimate children who might one day contest the throne.

Compare The Unfair Sex, Oops! I Forgot I Was Married (if the mistress does not know about the other's family), Dark Mistress (who is not necessarily an evil version of this, despite the name). Many a Trophy Wife starts out this way, although it is by no means guaranteed that she'll eventually become his wife... or, for that matter, that every (usually second or third) marriage between an older (and usually rich) man and a younger woman started out this way. Mistresses in a setting with Islamic and/or Asian influence often live in a Royal Harem. When the mistress has kids, and the man helps her raise them behind his wife's back, that's Secret Other Family. See also Good Adultery, Bad Adultery. And if you can think of a perfectly equivalent, accurate term with the exact same connotations for the Spear Counterpart, please let us know — society has yet to come up with one.

Not to be confused with the other type of "Mistress", nor with a feminine form of The Master.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In The Legend of Zelda, the previous Queen Zelda had an elf lover behind her husband's back. Link is the result of that affair. As her husband was terribly prejudiced against elves, the half-elf Link was sent away without knowing his relationship to the Hyrulian royal family.
• Maria no Danzai: Mari Nagare/Maria Akeboshi maintains an affair with the principal presumably to keep him under her thumb despite the fact that she clearly detests him and still has feelings for her ex-husband Taiichiro. While in the midst of doing some Ear Cleaning, when he asks if they could go on a private vacation, she deliberately pokes his eardrums.
• Nodoka gets the idea of being this in Negima! Magister Negi Magi when her subconscious suggests a solution to a Love Triangle she's in. That suggestion is "saishoudoukin", a situation where a man keeps a wife and a concubine in the same house.
• This trope is referenced in Ranma ½. One of the things Ranma does to try and get Ukyo to dump him is to tell her he's going to go spend the night with his mistress. Made funnier when he enters Akane's room and tries to convince her to go along with it. She really doesn't take it well.
• Rosario + Vampire makes use of it overtly; in the case of those seeking Tsukune's love only one has expressed real interest in marriage, with the others either outright saying they want to be something else to him, or simply showing no great interest either way. However more subtly when we finally discover the full picture of the Shuzen family, we learn that not only was Issa casually polygamous, but it is implied that among his partners, Moka's mother Akasha Bloodriver is Issa Shuzen's mistress rather then his wife. This despite also being a Shinso vampire and one of the Three Dark Lords, who control/watch over Japan.
• Being set at the court of Versailles in the years preceding The French Revolution, The Rose of Versailles has various examples.
  • The most notable being Madame Du Barry (the mistress of King Louis XV and an early villain and enemy of Marie Antoinette). At the time, as explained by Madame De Polignac, it was so common for married nobles to have a lover on the side that people were astonished that Louis XVI and Oscar's father had none, and many were willing to believe that Fersen was Marie Antoinette's lover because it made more sense than Marie Antoinette refusing to consummate their love because of her duty as the queen.
  • Speaking of Madame De Polignac... Her lover was her brother-in-law.
  • When it came to Oscar's father, when a child showed up and claimed he was his son from his late mistress, everyone but Oscar's mother believed it because it just made more sense than the opposite — though Andrè's grandmother was pissed for his infidelity. Eventually it turned out he was the son of a different officer that, when the relationship started, claimed to be the Count of Jarjayes because he felt he wasn't important enough to have that woman as his mistress, and even after being promoted never got around explaining the truth.
  • For Marie Antoinette, it's heavily implied that they wanted to consume their relationship, but decided to wait until her legitimate children were relatively old so to not imperil the succession. They eventually consume their relationship before the Flight to Varennes after Louis XVI, who had known the whole time and pretended not to know because he trusted her and it made her happy, gave them implicit permission.
  • When it appeared that he would marry Oscar, Girodelle told André he would allow him to be Oscar's lover if they both wished. That is how easily it was accepted.
• Count Roland of the manga Under the Rose, set in the last years of Victorian England, has two mistresses. One is Grace King, the glamorous, pretty daughter of a declined Marquis; the other is Margareth Stanley, a clumsy, plain jane who was his former intern. It says a lot when each of the mistresses has a more active role in raising the children, sans William, who is his mother's (legitimate wife) favorite. Yes, it is Seinen featuring a dysfunctional family.

Comic Books

• Wonder Woman (1942): Lisa Abernathy has been in a long-term secret relationship with the married senator, Brad Covington, who is implied to be her elementary school-aged daughter's father. She is pissed when she realizes that Gen. Darnell has figured out that she and Brad are dating.

Fan Works

• Anastasia/Quasimodo – We Hit a Wall: The story starts wifh Lady Tremaine finding out about her husband's young mistress, Esmeralda. In the end, she has her killed, though this leads her husband to kill himself a few days later.
• '"but i wrote the words to the swan song'': Juliet becomes a mistress to an already-married Ottoman dignitary that fell in love with her instead of marrying him and spends twenty years living a luxurious life with him.
• Discussed in the Descendants story "Package Deal" when Mal and Evie were in a relationship back on the Isle of the Lost and thus Evie joins Ben and Mal's relationship after the confrontation with Maleficent. It's noted that Mal is regarded as the "official" royal consort as she was publicly involved with Ben first, with Evie's lesser-known status leading to others referring to her as the king's mistress, but Ben, Mal and Evie all reject that title and affirm that Ben loves Evie just as much as Mal.
• This is discussed in the first chapter of Fake (Vega62a) due to the fact Sachiko is marrying a gay man. She guesses that Suguru will have his own lover, but wonders who will be her own. Sei is her first option for a mistress. Not because of the sex (Youko would be better for just that), but because she would kindly reject her advances.
• "Heis'he Ri'nanovai": Morgan t'Thavrau realizes by looking at genetic records recovered from the ruins of Romulus she was conceived as the result of an adulterous affair between Merken tr'Vreenak, then a prefectural governor, and his chief of staff Iliana. It's unclear how long the affair went on, but Iliana had worked for him for nine years. Morgan surmises her parents ended the affair and kept her paternity a secret to avoid inter-clan blood feuds, never mind a scandal that would've ended both their careers.
• This is used for Deliberate Values Dissonance in Kindred. Aurora casually mentions that her father has eight mistresses (with one of them supposedly giving Aurora a half-sibling) and Mulan mentions that her father has one as well. Jasmine's father had a harem until he killed them all because one of them wasn't faithful while the emperor of China has several hundred concubines.
• The idea is discussed in Lost in Camelot, after Bo forms a triad relationship with Merlin and Morgana. Even after all three accept that they genuinely love each other (Morgana in particular took time to accept the idea that she could have such feelings for another woman), it has been observed that it's unlikely the rest of Camelot will accept the dynamic. Morgana observes at one point that the best they can probably hope for is that Arthur will promote Merlin after he becomes king to a level where it would be publicly acceptable for Merlin to marry Bo or Morgana while the other is his official mistress, and even then, such a dynamic wouldn't acknowledge how Bo and Morgana feel about each other.
• A lot of the drama in Metamorphosis (EndOfAbraxas) comes from Sachiko asking Yumi to be her mistress after she marries her gay, arranged husband. Sachiko, being the ojou she is, words it as Yumi "living in the same room" (and, if Yumi likes, the same bed) as her, as "an adopted family member".
• The New Retcons: It's revealed after Elly's death that John had been cheating on her for two years, first with sex workers before making Kortney this trope. She's also old enough to be his daughter and had previously stolen from Elly and threatened to beat up April.
• Restraint: In Aphelion, Ty Lee begins having an affair with her wife's married brother Zuko after Azula runs off because she's scared of emotionally hurting her family. She even ends up pregnant by him. When Zuko's wife finds out, she temporarily leaves with their daughter.
• Their Bond: It's noted that one of the previous princesses of Hyrule, Eldora, had a lover in her brother. It's even speculated that her children were really his, not her husband's. The king himself also had a mistress in one of his maids. His maid had his kids and it's been noted that the children were friends with one another. The marriages were non-romantic, so neither had any issue with each other taking lovers.

Films — Animation

• Patlabor 2: The Movie: Back when Shinobu was a cadet at the Tsuge Institute, she had an affair with the instructor, himself, despite knowing he was married. It was both a breach of police protocol and ethics. Word of the affair soon got out, reaching as far as he top brass, which created a scandal (though it isn't said whether Tsuge's wife ever found out he was cheating on her with one of his students). The stigma barred Shinobu from ever attaining a seat among the higher-ups, which forced her to settle for a position at the SVU.^note Shinobu would have likely gained a position on the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Management Bureau, had it not been for the affair.

Films — Live-Action

• 8 Women: Gaby and Marcel are married, but the latter slept regularly with Louise for five years prior to the story. Louise got hired as a maid in their house and the affair continued. Despite this and Gaby's outrage at finding out, Louise developed her own interest in Gaby and wants to be her maid.
• In 68 Kill, Ken is Liza's sugar daddy, and the relationship is the main source of income for her and Chip.
• In The Big Clock, Pauline York is Earl Janoth's mistress. When Janoth sees Stroud leaving her apartment, he assumes she is cheating on him and murders her during the subsequent argument.
• Cassandro: Yocasta had a longtime affair with a prominent married man, and Saúl is the result of this union. There is even a flashback of Yocasta bringing her son to a family outing and being sent away by the wife. Ironically, Saúl himself becomes the gay lover of the closeted Gerardo, who is outwardly happily married with children.
• Colette: Willy is keeping a mistress early on his marriage, until Colette makes him break it off. Later, Meg becomes his live-in mistress, with Colette's tacit approval.
• Veronica Franco becomes this to Marco Venier in Dangerous Beauty, after having been a courtesan.
• Helen's husband Charles has one in Diary of a Mad Black Woman, and she even had two children with him (meanwhile, Helen had two miscarriages).
• The book in Down with Love even makes mistresses unwilling to cooperate with men any more.
• Feast of Love: Diana is the long-term lover of David, a married man. They don't do anything except drink wine and have sex together, which she finds lacking, with her leaving him for Bradley. After that, he also leaves his wife, and they end up a happy couple as she leaves Bradley.
• In Horrors of the Black Museum, Joan Berkley is Edmond Bancroft's mistress. The dialogue during their argument indicates that she is a kept woman, living entirely off Bancroft's largess. When she gets sick of Bancroft and breaks off their arrangement, Bancroft sends Rick to murder her.
• In the Mouth of Madness: An Insurance Fraud scam is found out when a guy claims a warehouse full of fur coats was supposedly destroyed, but he kept the coats, giving some to his wife, who ratted on him when it turned out he gave some to his mistress.
• In Just the Way You Are, one of the women at the ski resort is having an affair with a married man. He was supposed to come to the ski resort, but his wife got sick, and his mistress was forced to room with Susan because she didn't have anywhere else to go.
• Kapoor & Sons: Harsh and Sunita's marriage is on the rocks in part because he had an extramarital affair with a family friend named Anu, which has not yet ended.
• In The Life of Oharu, Oharu is sold to a lord to be his concubine and deliver him an heir, the wife being barren. After she does deliver an heir, she is booted out of the lord's palace.
• The Other Woman (2009): Emilia plays the eponymous role. She has an affair with Jack, who's married. After becoming pregnant with their baby, Jack divorces his wife and marries Emilia.
• The Princess (2022): Moira is Julius' long-term lover, though he's going to marry the princess. She seems fine with that, and he likely can't marry her as she's a commoner.
• Ray: Mary Ann Fisher and Margie Hendricks to Ray.
• In Revenge (2017), Jen is the mistress to the wealthy Richard. Richard claims he is only staying with his wife because of the children. However, after Jen is raped by Richard's friend Stan, she threatens to tell his wife what is going on if he does not resolve the situation. Richard then demonstrates that he has no intention of leaving his wife, and decides that Murder Is the Best Solution to get Jen out of the picture.
• The titular character of Rosita is forced into being this to the lecherous King of Spain. When the Queen of Spain finds out, she is obviously annoyed. She ends up working with Rosita against her husband.
• Lola's father has one in Run Lola Run, who convinces him to elope with her.
• Sam's mistress in Ruthless People, who tries to blackmail him because she's sleeping with another man.
• Shiva Baby: Unbeknownst to her, Danielle's sugar daddy Max not only is married, but has a child, which shocks her, realizing that she's inadvertently been this for some time. Later, it comes out when his wife Kim is nearby.
• Sunshine Cleaning: Rose is in a long-term relationship with Mac, who's married to another woman. They even have a son together. She finally breaks up with him after realizing he's not going to leave his wife for her.
• Ten Little Mistresses: Exaggerated to the point of parody. Valentin has a whopping ten flashy and spoiled mistresses who see each other as rivals and who want to be his legal wife. It is occasionally commented that the entire setup is extremely antifeminist, and the other women eventually admit that being rivals with nine other women have distracted them from Valentin's lies through the years.
• In Thunderball, Domino, the "Good Bond Girl", is the mistress of Monster of the Week Largo when she and Bond meet.
• In What's the Worst That Could Happen?, Max Fairbanks is two-timing his wife with a mistress and is an asshole to both of them. Strangely enough, he still is afraid of this affair being discovered (maybe because he doesn't want to lose any money in the divorce), so Tiffany (the aforementioned lover) manages to make Max do what she wants a couple of times during the film by threatening to tell his wife.

Literature

• Ariel (Plath): One interpretation of the poem "The Rival" is that the subject is meant to be the mistress of Sylvia Plath's husband.
• Ascendance of a Bookworm: Taking mistresses is apparently a common practice among high-ranking men, to the point that young girls are sometimes promised as future mistresses as some sort of loose equivalent to an engagement. Noblemen, even the most low-ranking ones, are absolutely not supposed to properly marry outside of nobility, so the only Nobility Marries Money arrangement that is mentioned in the story has the "money" side slated to become a mistress. The male head of the temple doesn't have a wife, but plenty of mistresses. The children of mistresses are considered illegitimate children despite this, though having a noble father can let them get a few perks of nobility such as going to the setting's Wizarding School.
• The Cat in the Stacks Mysteries: In book 2, Hubert Morris is blatantly cheating on his mentally ill wife with his long-time lover, Anita Milhaus. He even stole from his uncle James' rare book collection to finance the presents he bought for Anita, which is what draws Charlie into the situation when James hires him to inventory the collection and figure out what's missing.
• In Deverry, Rhodry takes Jill as a mistress. He would have liked to marry her, and his allies do end up arranging things so she can be given a title to enable them to marry. However, fate has different plans in store for them and they can't... for reasons of destiny. It's acknowledged that this is common among the nobility due to the proliferation of political marriages; and in many cases the jilted spouse doesn't particularly mind as long as you are tactful and discreet.
• Dune:
  • Dune: Paul's mother Jessica is the 'bound concubine' of Duke Leto Atreides, and presumably if he'd married she would have become his mistress — but the two of them consider themselves married in everything but name.
  • Deconstructed in Dune Messiah: Emperor Paul Atreides considers Chani, the woman who is technically his mistress, to be his true wife, and never consummates his official (and political) marriage with Irulan Corrino, the daughter of the emperor he overthrew in the first book. This leads to court power games to everyone's detriment, eventually resulting in Chani's Death by Childbirth from complications of Irulan secretly dosing her with contraceptives, and Paul abandoning his crown to wander the desert until the next book.
• Elsabeth Soesten:
  • Although he's not married, Lord Cuncz offers to make Elsabeth this at the end of No Good Deed... She rightly surmises he's really doing it as a means to keep an eye on her because she knows too much about his identity and declines. For his part, Cuncz remains gracious at her refusal.
  • Cuncz himself is the product of a relationship between a rival lord and his favorite mistress. The woman died in childbirth, and the local Abbot used the infant Cuncz as part of his efforts to build a power base against his own political rival.
• In Fate/Zero, Kiritsugu and Maiya have known each other for a long time and have been sleeping together for some time, even after his marriage to Irisviel and despite the fact that Kiritsugu actually loves his wife.
• In The Great Gatsby, this is Blue Blood Tom Buchanan's relationship with Myrtle Wilson, who herself has an unhappy marriage with an auto mechanic.
• In Guilty Wives, Winnie is revealed to have been the mistress of the President of France for some time before the action of the novel begins.
• Akeno takes the place of Issei's mistress in High School D×D. In a twist, Top Wife Rias is not only aware of this, but openly condones it, since Akeno is her best friend and Rias knows that Akeno has a kink for being the other woman. Even when the rest of Issei's harem eventually marry him and take his name, Akeno never does — it's hard to cheat with your own husband!
• The court in the Hurog duology has the official version — the queen's lover is appointed by the king, and the king has a male "favourite", who is country-wide known to be the one who shares his bed.
• In the Time of the Butterflies: Papa has another family with three other children in addition to the four daughters he has with his wife.
• In Jane Eyre, Rochester's past is filled with lovers — usually rich and well-known performers, such as Céline Varens. At the time of the novel, he says he's grown tired of keeping girlfriends. After their would-be wedding is busted, Rochester offers this position to Jane. Jane realizes she could not possibly live with herself in this way, and leaves him.
• Gender-inverted in The Kept Man of the Princess Knight: Matthew is Warrior Princess Arwin's "kept man", which amounts in practice to being her live-in housekeeper, manservant, and PTSD therapist, whom she pays an allowance out of dungeon loot. Their relationship is emotionally and physically affectionate, but not actually sexual.
• Last Herald-Mage Trilogy: King Randale's beloved Herald Shavri is officially this, mainly because the option of a State Marriage had to be left open (partly because Shavri was terrified of being Queen). Their daughter Jisa is legally a bastard, though she marries back into the line of succession. This also starts a Secret Legacy in the Valdemar royal family, since Vanyel is Jisa's actual father.
• Maiden Crown has a slightly unusual example. Tove becomes this to King Valdemar after he marries Princess Sophie, but they were already lovers before he and Sophie were even betrothed. Valdemar only resumes their relationship when his marriage starts going through a rough patch.
• Making Money: The bank's previous owner was the former mistress and later wife of the former chairman, mentioning that as his mistress, she had the wife's approval because it got him out of her hair for a while. He also had other lovers after they were married, under the same kind of arrangement. She was also good with numbers, which is why she remained in charge of the bank after his death. Before she passed on, she noted that standards have dropped and that now "the ability to spin upside down on a pole is considered sufficient".
• In Les Misérables, Marius's grandfather has had many mistresses over the course of his life, and believes it's better to take a woman as a mistress than to actually marry her. When Marius tells his grandfather about Cosette, his immediate advice is to keep her as a mistress instead of as a legal wife (Marius, who reveres Cosette, finds the idea of dishonoring her so much to be unspeakable).
• Petra Cotes in One Hundred Years of Solitude, doubling as one of the three hookers with hearts of gold.
• A Song of Ice and Fire plays with this trope constantly.
  • As part of the series' Backstory, King Aegon IV ("The Unworthy") had several semi-official mistresses, and thus several illegitimate children. As bastards, they weren't entitled to inherit, until the king legitimized them on his deathbed. Civil war resulted.
  • Some high lords keep mistresses, but they have no official standing, and the relationship is considered adulterous and immoral. Such mistresses are kept behind closed doors, and the relationship is kept officially secret, even if it's common knowledge. (Tyrion Lannister's whore/mistress is treated in this way, lest she be used against him by Cersei, or killed by Tywin.)
  • In Dorne, where looser standards of sexual morality are in play, mistresses can be given official status as paramours. The relationships are public and have no implication of shame. Even a Dornish member of the supposedly celibate Kingsguard kept one. In some cases, a man and wife will even share a paramour.
  • Daenerys Targaryen marries twice, but aside from that, has plenty of men and women to serve in her bed. The only one who has a regular position, however, is a mercenary named Daario Naharis who she retains even after she remarries.
  • Melisandre is implied to be this to Stannis Baratheon.
• Goes both ways in StarCraft: Ghost Nova. It's explained that due to marriages among the Confederacy's aristocracy on Tarsonis being invariably political in nature, it's expected that both husband and wife will have mistresses (called a "jig" in the wife's case, seemingly a shortened form of "gigolo"). Nova's parents hate each other so much they've apparently never actually had sex with each other: she was conceived via IVF.
• The Sunne in Splendour:
  • Edward IV has many mistresses, but his favorite and the one he falls in love with is Jane Shore.
  • Before he becomes a Family Man, Richard III takes a mistress named Katherine, who becomes the mother of his daughter.
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs: Marriages among nobles in the Holfort Kingdom being largely for political advantage, it's common for both the husband and wife to have other lovers on the side.
  • Protagonist Leon is the son of his baron father and his mistress, and is mutually despised by his father's legal wife, the powerful Lady Zola. In book three, Zola and her children are stripped of their titles for Draft Dodging during the war with the Principality of Fanoss, and Leon's father promptly divorces her and marries Leon's mother.
  • Leon in turn gets engaged to Angie, the daughter of his ally Duke Redgrave, with his other girlfriend Livia becoming his official mistress since she's a commoner. This doesn't cause much problem since Angie and Livia have also fallen in love with each other.

Live-Action TV

• In 'Allo 'Allo!, Rene is cheating on his wife with Yvette, and cheating on both of them with Maria. Later he also cheats with Mimi, Michelle, Denise La Roche, Louise, and possibly most of the Communist Resistance. And apparently this wasn't all of them.
• Bridgerton: In season 1, Siena Rosso has been the bachelor Anthony Bridgerton's mistress for a quite long time. Despite it's an Open Secret, yet Anthony's family never know about their affair. After Anthony seems to finally be ready to go public with her, she suddenly changes her mind and eventually breaks off their relationship.
• Charite has young actress Hedwig Freiberg becoming this for renowned Professor Robert Koch. Koch's wife, whose marriage with him has long come to an end emotionally, doesn't want to divorce (it's late 19th century; divorces are still considered a great disgrace), but she'll accept the affair as long as it's kept discreet. Works out until an immoral journalist finds he can profit from turning the relationship into a public scandal. After following through with a divorce after all, Koch winds up happily Remarried to the Mistress.
• Lucrezia Donati is this to Lorenzo de' Medici on Da Vinci's Demons. At one point she and Lorenzo's wife come face-to-face, and the conversation is surprisingly civil. When Lucrezia asks how Clarice can bear to look at her, Clarice simply points out that "you will never be up on that wall" (that is, the mural that depicts Lorenzo's family).
• Spoofed in Designing Women, when they get a mistress to stop seeing a married man, but the wife was angry, because she knew about the affair and was having her own.
• Desperate Housewives wouldn't really be Desperate Housewives if it didn't have at least one mistress per season.
• Doctor Who: "The Girl in the Fireplace" revolves around Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of King Louis XV Bourbon of France.
• Fellow Travelers: Played with in Hawkins Fuller and Tim Laughlin's relationship. Immediately after Hawk tells Tim that he plans to ask Lucy Smith to marry him, Tim enlists in the army because he is determined not to become the male equivalent of a mistress for Hawk. However, in spite of his attempts to cut ties with Hawk and move on with his life, Tim remains in love with Hawk, and falls into bed with him every time they see each other in the ensuing decades. On more than one occasion, Tim laments his own inability to say no to Hawk.
• In the Firefly episode "Shindig", Atherton Wing wants Inara for one of these. Mal objects to his possessiveness, leading to a sword duel over her honor. It's indicated in the pilot that Inara gets these kinds of offers on a regular basis, and we find out after all's said and done that she had no intention of accepting the offer in the first place.
• A French Village: Three adulterous relationships on the show are long-term:
  • Marie is with Raymond, although they later break it off.
  • Hortense and Müller, who get a fake marriage certificate later.
  • Sarah and Daniel, until she goes into hiding to escape arrest for being Jewish.
• Friends: Joey is horrified to learn that his father has been seeing another woman who openly refers to herself as "the Mistress". It eventually turns out that Joey's mother knew what was going on, but acted like she didn't as the guilt made Mr. Tribbiani more attentive to her.
• Game of Thrones:
  • In a gender-inverted example, Loras Tyrell fulfills this role when his lover Renly Baratheon marries Loras' sister Margaery. Verges on an Open Secret, if the amount of sarcastic references to the relationship is any indication. At one point, the exclusively homosexual Renly is trying to make excuses for not consummating the marriage, to which Margaery suggests in all seriousness that they bring Loras in to "get him started." Renly thinks this is an insult, but she actually fully accepts that the marriage is a political sham while Loras is his real lover; she just thinks they need to have an heir to cement the alliance.
  • Shae after Tyrion marries Sansa.
  • Melisandre for Stannis, though they only have sex once to spawn the Living Shadow that kills his brother Renly.
• House of the Dragon:
  • Daemon Targaryen is legally married to Rhea Royce, but they are estranged (he once calls her the "bronze bitch"). Instead, he has an affair with a foreign dancer named Mysaria, who provides genuine emotional support to him. By the fourth episode, however, Mysaria seems to have fallen out of favor with Daemon following the latter's years-long campaign in the Stepstones, and is building a spy network in King's Landing.
  • Laenor Velaryon is betrothed to Rhaenyra Targaryen, but he is not interested in her or indeed any other woman, and instead keeps a male paramour named Joffrey Lonmouth, who seems to be happy with the arrangement. However, when Rhaenyra offers the same status to Ser Criston Cole (whom she had impulsively banged after her rejection by Daemon), the latter does not take this well, knowing that he will be gelded if his sworn brothers learn that he has broken his oath to the Kingsguard. Things go worse when Joffrey attempts to befriend Criston as "fellow paramours" during Rhaenyra's and Laenor's wedding, as Criston, angry and fearful of his fate, ends up beating Joffrey to death.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): For most of Season 1, Antoinette Brown is this for Lestat de Lioncourt, who is in a committed relationship with Louis de Pointe du Lac. Whenever Lestat feels that Louis isn't paying enough attention to him sexually, he "entertains" and "amuses" himself with Antoinette instead.
• Kaamelott: Arthur has up to four mistresses at any given time, going from one to the other as his needs warrant. Hilarity Ensues when a rumor spreads of his rebuking the queen, and each girl tries to convince him to marry her.
• In Madam Secretary, Elizabeth's chief of staff Nadine Tolliver, whom she inherited from the preceding Secretary of State Vincent Marsh, confesses midway through season one that she had been Marsh's mistress for six years. He was basically stringing her along saying he was going to divorce his wife, while using her authority to help him plot the overthrow of the Iranian government.
  Nadine: I swear, I'm glad he's dead.
• The Musketeers: In the second season, King Louis XIII takes Milady de Winter as his official mistress leaving Queen Anne humiliated by his publicly flaunting Milady. Aramis, who has feelings for Anne, is furious at the way she's being treated and Athos, who used to be married to Milady, is so unable to deal with it that he abandons guard duty and returns to the garrison so he can avoid them.
• In My Name Is Earl, Earl had a Bad Boss with a hot blonde wife and an equally hot brunette girlfriend on the side. When Earl punches him (landing him in the hospital), the two women show up to be by his side... and find out about each other's existence. When the (soon-to-be-ex) wife is giving him a Defenestrate and Berate, she finds the money he's been laundering and he winds up in prison. He loses both his wife and his girlfriend... but he does become his cellmate's prison bitch. (With a coffee mug that has "World's Best Bottom" scrawled on it.)
• A gender-inverted version appears in The Office (US), during the plotline where Michael thinks his girlfriend Donna is cheating on him, but it turns out that the "other man" is her husband: "I'M the mistress?"
• Quantum Leap: The first time Sam leaps into a woman, he's there to save "his" roommate from committing suicide over an relationship with her boss — she thought her boss would leave his wife for her, but the wife made it clear to her that she tolerated his "indiscretions" but they would never break up (and she was a former mistress of the boss herself, having broken up his previous marriage).
• Scandal (2012):
  • Olivia Pope used to be the President's Press Secretary as well as his mistress. Mellie, the President's wife, knew about it and was generally fine with it since the marriage was purely a political one at this point. The people who knew assumed that when the President's term in office was over, he would divorce Mellie and marry Olivia. However, Olivia threw a wrench into the arrangement by breaking off the relationship and quitting her job. Throughout the series the President tries to rekindle the relationship, but Olivia is tired of the lies and betrayals. In season 2 the relationship between them turns outright toxic.
  • One of Olivia's clients turns out to be a male example of this. He is in love with his brother's wife, and they have been having a clandestine relationship for more than a decade. Olivia gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech explaining why such an arrangement is not a real relationship and he needs to end it if he wants to be ever truly happy. Of course, she is partly talking about herself as well.
• Sex and the City: Carrie is effectively Mr. Big's mistress for a time, as they have sexual encounters behind his new wife's back. Carrie actually finds the experience deeply humiliating, particularly when a Japanese businessman who frequents the hotel where they meet for sex assumes she is a prostitute and tries to hire her.
• She's Gotta Have It: Jamie is married in this version, with Nola and he having a long-term connection, though for her at least it's just Friends with Benefits (while he wants more). After she finds out, Jamie's wife cusses her out to Nola's face angrily (by then, they're already divorcing).
• The Sopranos: Almost every made guy has a "Comare" (pronounced "goomah" by everyone,^note Linguistic note: Though the word is Sicilian, Italian Americans in the Northeast tend to pronounce words from Italy with a Neapolitan accent; Neapolitan turns "c/k" sounds to "g" sounds, and "o" sounds to "u/oo" sounds, and drops final vowels altogether. This means a Neapolitan would say "comare" as "gumar". The "ah" at the end of "goomah" is the North Jersey non-rhotic accent eliminating the final "r" in "gumar". meaning "godmother" in Sicilian dialect, but slang for mistress) on top of their wives who they won't divorce for their Catholic beliefs. For the main character, it becomes a major plot device when one of his mistresses actually contacts his home pushing his wife to call it quits, albeit temporarily.
• Hilariously, in the last season of The Tudors, Charles Brandon introduces his French girlfriend to people as his "official mistress". Less hilariously, in an earlier season, Henry offered this position to Anne Boleyn when he was still married to Catherine of Aragon. To say that Anne refused is underselling the reaction.
• The Undoing: Elena has been Jonathan's girlfriend for over a year at least (as he turns out to be the father of her infant son), while both are married to other people.
• The War of the Worlds (2019): Amy starts out this way, as George is revealed to have a wife already. He never gets formally divorced, though he later says Amy is his wife. She later expresses guilt about their affair. His wife thinks he did this because she can't give him a child, and so he's moved on to a woman who can, though he insists it's because Amy is his soulmate. True of his motive or not, Amy does give birth to their baby later.
• The West Wing: Towards the end of the second season, Sam Seaborn learns that his father has been having a long-term affair with another woman. While he initially tries to act dismissive it's clear that he's deeply hurt by the betrayal by someone he respected.
  Leo: My father had affairs.
  Sam: Did he?
  Leo: Yeah.
  Sam: My father didn't pick up a cocktail waitress, Leo. He's had a woman in an apartment in Santa Monica for 28 years.
• The White Queen: Jane Shore is King Edward IV's favourite mistress.
• Y: The Last Man (2021): Hero had been in a long-term relationship with her partner Mike, who's married. After he lied about having finally left his wife for her, Hero flew into a rage.

Music

Examples by creator:

• Taylor Swift has used this character in her songs.
  • Defied by the narrator of "Girl at Home", who is pursued by a man who has a girlfriend. She rejects him out of hand, and gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, explaining that she's been cheated on in the past, would never put another woman through that, and feels a responsibility to set him straight. She basically tells him he's an immature loser, and to get his act together and appreciate the woman he has.
  • "illicit affairs" is from the perspective of a woman who's been carrying on with someone who's married for a long time. It's a Deconstructed Character Archetype, as the narrator is obviously unhappy with having to sneak around and being kept a secret, but she loves her partner too much to really consider ending it, making her come off as quite the Love Martyr.
  • Este's husband in "no body, no crime" has a woman on the side, and murders his wife when she figures it out and confronts him. It's left ambiguous whether or not the mistress was complicit or an accomplice in the murder, but she does move in with him almost as soon as Este disappears.
  • The narrator of "ivy" begins a long-term affair despite having a husband, but it's unclear whether she's a married woman cheating because she's unhappy, or if her husband is dead and she's a widow, but she feels guilty for moving on and still feels his presence.

Examples by title:

• "Can't Let U Go" by Fabolous is about a man who is already married, and is torn between his wife and his girlfriend (and trying to keep the former from finding out about the latter). For now, he decides to secretly have his cake and eat it too, because "the entree ain't as good without something on the side". For her part, the mistress knows full well that her boyfriend is already married, and is apparently OK with the status quo.
• Reba McEntire's "Does He Love You" (ft. Linda Davis) is a Call-and-Response Song with the wife and mistress of a man, which is half insecurities about being with a man who is cheating on each of them, and half challenging each other with how he acts around each of them, which proves he loves one or the other more ("Does he love you, like he's been loving me?").
• "Saving All My Love for You", by Whitney Houston, is from the mistress's POV as she laments that her paramour is being about as honest with her as he is with his wife and family.
• "Two Black Cadillacs" is a Murder Ballad by Carrie Underwood about two women who find out that their husband and boyfriend, respectively, has been two-timing them, and collaborate to kill him. They get away with it, too.
• "Two Weeks" by FKA twigs is sung from the perspective of an aspiring one, saying that all she needs is, in fact, two weeks to make her target of affection forget about their loved one.

Professional Wrestling

• Vince McMahon Jr. has had several, the most famous of them being Trish Stratus. Stratus did very little to hide her status, thinking herself hot stuff, and part of what made her role famous was a rare feud that had Jr.'s daughter Stephanie McMahon as a baby face of sorts against Trish. The other famous part was when Vince Jr. made it publicly known that Trish was just a toy he was getting bored of, and had her on all fours barking like a dog to keep her job. This had the side effect of turning Stratus face against the entire McMahon family, Stephanie included, except Vince Jr.'s wife Linda, who was oddly sympathetic towards Trish in spite of her displeasure with her husband's infidelity. Torrie Wilson, Victoria and Candice Michelle, the Girl Posse known as Vince's Devils, had the distinction of serving as Vince Jr.'s mistresses all at once while feuding with a former mistress of Jr.'s, Trish Stratus. Granted, the feud was over Ashley Massaro asking Stratus for help after weeks being bullied by the three, as well as Stratus having the women's title belt that said Devils ended up turning on each other over. Still, there was a moment when Michelle had the gall to call Stratus a slut. Ultimately, turning company employees into his mistresses in exchange for benefits proved to be Truth in Television for McMahon and the reason for his downfall.

Radio

• In The Men from the Ministry Ms. Bentwater of the typing pool is this to Sir Gregory.

Theatre

• Cyrano de Bergerac: De Guiche wants to bully heroine Roxane into this. She will have none of it.
• In The Rose Tattoo, Estelle Hohengarten, a blackjack dealer from Texas who works at the Square Roof on the Esplanade, has an affair with Rosario delle Rose whose one-year anniversary was to have been celebrated on the day of his funeral. Of course, everybody knows about it but his wife, who only acknowledges it several years later.

Video Games

• Dragon Age:
  • In Dragon Age: Origins, if a Female Warden makes Alistair king and cannot/will not make herself queen and are in a romance, and provided he became "hardened" earlier, she may become his mistress. Not just a mistress, though, she may be his adviser, as well. A human noble Warden who marries the new monarch but is in a relationship with Zevran or a hardened Leliana can similarly keep their lover around.
  • Further on down the series line, Inquisition companion Vivienne has a lot of political clout for a mage due to being the mistress of an Orlesian count. His wife approved of the situation; the two of them got along splendidly, and Vivienne still mourns her death.
• Fire Emblem:
  • In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, King Desmond of Bern has a son (Zephiel) by the queen (Helenne), and a daughter (Guinevere) by his unnamed mistress. His illegitimate family lives in the palace, while his official one lives in an old out-of-the way manor. It's explained in the earlier-released Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade that said mistress was actually the King's old girlfriend, whom the King couldn't marry due to being forced in an Arranged Marriage with the Queen. Needless to say, it does not end well.
  • In Fire Emblem Fates, King Garon of Nohr had many mistresses and some of these women gave him children. This made the Decadent Court even worse than it already was, as the concubines started in-fighting each other and using their kids as leverage; it got so bad that out of all the kids born and raised in such an entourage, only four remained (one of them being the sole legitimate child and heir). It's quite strongly implied that Mikoto, the widow of King Sumeragi and the Queen Regnant of Hoshido, was his mistress first and only married him after he was widowed. Unlike the above-mentioned Garon's case, Mikoto was Sumeragi's only known lover (especially in the localization, which takes away a line implying that Sumeragi used to sleep around before being enthroned) and that she never gave him children — the mother of the Hoshidan Royal Siblings was the late legitimate Queen, Ikona, whereas Mikoto's child (the Avatar) was already born before she arrived to Hoshido, and his/her birth father is someone else.
• Grand Theft Pizza Delivery: Bob learns at the Trip Pub that his boss, Speedy Joe, is seeing one of the club's women behind his wife's back. He follows Speedy Joe's car to a park where he spots the two.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda: If romanced, Keri T'Vessa assumes she's one for Ryder, while Ryder's off exploring the Heleus Cluster.
• In Pretentious Game 3, the bright pink square is the gray square's mistress while he's married to the light pink square.
• Princess Maker 2:
  • There's a possible ending with the girl as the lover of a local landlord as well. Said landlord can potentially show up earlier and make the girl his lover if she has high Charisma with low Morals — it's not recommended to just let her be, though, as she'll get a rather nice allowance from him every month, but her stats and overall rep will go lower.
  • The King of the Land also has a royal concubine, and the daughter can speak to her. She seems to be a pretty but deadly bored woman rather disenchanted with the life of the court, but unwilling to leave it due to the benefits it still gives her.
• In Tales of Symphonia, Zelos' father had a half-elf mistress, who was the mother of Zelos' half-sister Seles. Despite him being the Chosen, it's implied that it was something everyone knew, as Zelos and Seles not only knew about each other, but they got on rather well. The mistress wasn't happy with the arrangement though, knowing that Zelos would be The Chosen One instead of her daughter... so she tried to murder Zelos with a powerful spell. She got to kill Zelos' mother instead, who died saying she wishes he'd never be born. The mistress was executed for treason, an emotionally broken Seles was sent away, and Zelos was thoroughly shattered.

Visual Novels

• Umineko: When They Cry:
  • Several characters theorize early on that the basis of the legends of Beatrice, the mysterious witch that Kinzo Ushiromiya seems to be obsessed with, is that Kinzo had a secret mistress (though Natsuhi, trying to be the loyal daughter-in-law, repeatedly tries to deny it). It turns out that they're right. Kinzo did have a mistress, an Italian beauty named Beatrice Castiglioni, who he met during the second World War. They fell deeply in love, and after Kinzo bought the island of Rokkenjima he built her a secret mansion, Kuwadorian, for her to live in, and he would often visit her under the pretense that he was going on business trips. They even had a daughter, but unfortunately Beatrice died in childbirth... and this caused Kinzo to go insane with grief, and as their daughter grew older he convinced himself that she was his mistress reincarnated, eventually leading him to rape her and get her pregnant with the kid who'd grow up into Sayo "Yasu" Yasuda, one of the key characters of the game.
  • Battler's stepmother, Kyrie, was this to his father Rudolf before the death of Battler's mother, Asumu. They even got pregnant around the same time.

Webcomics

• Ménage à 3 plays with this trope to comedic effect when it turns out that both Amber and Dillon are playing the mistress to sleazy Transparent Closeted bisexual producer Nathan.

Web Videos

• Sabaton History: Parodied in the producer segment for "The Last Battle" when Joakim facetiously refers to "Jenny" from the song as "my longtime lover". (The line actually refers to Besotten Jenny, the M4 Sherman tank that Captain Lee brought with him to Castle Itter.)
  Indy: Does your ladyfriend watch this?
  Joakim: I hope not! [cut to TV color bar screen with a tank in a heart pasted over it]

Western Animation

• Gender-inverted in King of the Hill. There is an Open Secret that Nancy has been having a 14-year affair with John Redcorn. Her husband Dale and son Joseph (who happens to look exactly like John, a brown-skinned Native American) are completely oblivious.
• Nurse Bendy to Principal Fakey in Moral Orel. She's pretty nonchalant about it, though the episode "Alone" implies that her mental state has regressed to that of a child, and that sleeping around has made her affection starved and depressed.

Real Life

• Madame de Pompadour, was one of the mistresses of Louis XV. She was featured in Le Chevalier d'Eon. She also appeared in the Doctor Who episode "The Girl in the Fireplace" (the Doctor even mentions that she and the queen were good friends).
  The Doctor: France! It's another planet!
  • Queen Marie Leszczyńska wasn't happy with her husband's affairs at all, since she was a devout Catholic. She merely preferred the well-behaved and properly deferential Pompadour over her downright arrogant predecessors. Marie Therese, Louis XIV's Queen, on the other hand, was openly disappointed when her husband exchanged Louise de la Valliere for Madame de Montespan.
  • Madame DuBarry was another mistress late in his life, who was an initial antagonist in The Rose of Versailles.
  • It may be added, that due to their actual and rumored political influence, royal maitresses made good scapegoats and fall guys. Choosing to forego this lightning rod did not help to make Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette more popular.
• Looking through the history of any European country, the amount of mistresses the royalty and nobility kept on hand is staggering. Special mention to Louis XIV, who was still sleeping around at 70, and Augustus II of Poland, who ended up with 350 children, of which one was legitimate. For most of European history, it was far rarer to find a king or prince who didn't have any mistresses.
• The most famous example of a queen openly keeping lovers is Catherine the Great. She also rewarded her lovers handsomely (one of them briefly became king of Poland). Notably she started before she had her husband overthrown (and possibly murdered) and kept it up afterward. (This is the likely point of the rumor that she died, um...'a horse' — it was a joke about her insatiable appetite and her penchant for picking her lovers from her horse guards.)
• A Swedish example: Frederik I's mistress Hedvig Taube who (like many others) acquired a large fortune from her liaison with the king.
• Ah, yes, the British and English monarchy. Let's look at the highlights, shall we? (Click here for a more comprehensive list.)
  • Edward IV seems to have slept with something like half the married noblewomen in England. Interestingly, this seems to have helped him politically, as his mistresses would influence their husbands to support him in the War of the Roses.
  • Henry VIII, Edward IV's grandson, had two confirmed mistresses, Elizabeth Blount and Mary Boleyn (yes, sister to Anne Boleyn). He may have had other mistresses, considering his personality, but beyond Elizabeth and Mary it is purely speculation. Anne herself was his quasi-mistress while he was divorcing Catherine of Aragon, and Jane Seymour was his mistress (in the same, not-so-fully-consummated way that Anne had been) while he was married to Anne Boleyn. Catherine Howard, wife number five, was his mistress while he was married to Anne of Cleves (with whom he never consummated his marriage).
  • King Charles II of England, Scotland, and Ireland was known as "the Merry Monarch" for his free-living lifestyle, and is famous for having twelve acknowledged illegitimate children by seven mistresses and no children at all by his wife, Catherine of Braganza. Many of Charles's bastards have prominent descendants, and one of them (Lady Diana Spencer) married the Prince of Wales, whose son Prince William will be the first of Charles's descendants to sit on the throne.
    • A common story is that several people started throwing insults and/or rocks at the carriage they thought contained his French-born mistress Louise de Kérouaille, calling her the "Catholic whore" until Nell Gwyn leaned out the window and noted with a smile:
      "Good people, you are mistaken; I am the Protestant whore."
    • Gwyn is also noted to have broken up a fight between a man who called her a whore and her coachman defending her honour by saying "I am a whore. Find something else to fight about."
    • Charles II's son by Nell Gwyn, Charles Beauclerk, was made Duke of St Albans; his descendants in the male line hold the title to this day. His son by de Kérouaille, Charles Lennox, was similarly given the title Duke of Richmond, which also still exists (the current Duke is partially responsible for the revival of Rolls Royce as an automotive marque).
  • George I of Great Britain, who succeeded Charles II's niece Anne, was noted for having a bad marriage with his wife, Sophia Dorothea (whom he actually divorced before ascending to the British throne) and living more or less openly with his mistress, Melusine von der Schulenburg, by whom he had three children.
  • George II, son of George I, is an interesting case: while he enjoyed a good relationship with his wife, Caroline of Ansbach, he also had a roving eye and had a succession of mistresses during her lifetime—but none without his wife's approval. Indeed, Queen Caroline personally vetted and (it seems) interviewed the ladies in question to ensure that their personalities were suitable for the role of royal mistress and also that they had no political opinions or associations that would put the King in an awkward position (Caroline was very perceptive and astute in court politics and her husband relied on her judgment in such matters even outside of his mistresses). When Queen Caroline was on her deathbed, she urged George to remarry after her passing; the grief-stricken George refused, famously saying, "Non, j'aurai des maîtresses!" ("No, I shall have mistresses!"), implying that no other woman could replace her as his wife. He proceeded to have several mistresses after her death, but true to his word, he never remarried. Just goes to show that if you're in the right century, England is another planet.
  • Ladies and gentlemen, the sons of George III. George III himself was completely devoted to his wife and never strayed (or at least, we have no record of his straying), and in general was a remarkable family man for a royal of his era. Meanwhile, all seven of his surviving sons were noted for their utter lack of interest in traditional marriage. While some (particularly his eldest son and heir, who became George IV) were unabashed womanizers (and habitués of brothels), others were more like hopeless romantics who for whatever reason found themselves unable to get the permission from the Sovereign^note Required under the Royal Marriages Act 1772—i.e. dear old Papa George for most of their lives—to marry the women they loved. They thus chose to live unmarried with these "unsuitable" women rather than make the political marriages expected of them. Specific examples:
    • William IV lived for 20 years (from 1791 to 1811) with the Anglo-Irish actress Dorothea Jordan as man and wife in all but name; they had ten children together. William would later marry a "proper" wife, Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, by whom he had five children; however, his three legitimate sons were stillborn and his two legitimate daughters died before their first birthdays, leaving the throne to his niece Victoria. On the other hand, William's surviving children (bearing the surname FitzClarence) had important descendants, the most famous of whom is former Prime Minister David Cameron.
    • Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, was a famous serial monogamist, living long-term first with two different Swiss women in succession, and then for 27 years with Thérèse de Montgenêt de Saint-Laurent, the wife of a French nobleman and cavalry officer whom he had met in Geneva.^note She had no children with him, despite what some Canadian families will tell you. He broke it off with Mme. de Saint-Laurent after the death of his brother George's only legitimate child Charlotte created a looming Succession Crisis, marrying a German princess (Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld) and producing the desired heir (the aforementioned Victoria) shortly before falling to a sudden case of pneumonia in 1820.
    • Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, had two marriages declared invalid because his father hadn't given him permission, though this didn't keep him from living with them as man and wife anyway. Queen Victoria, who liked her eccentric old Uncle Sussex, made his second wife a duchess in her own right so Sussex and his wife could sit together at official functions.
  • Edward VII famously had a number of mistresses and affairs, particularly during his fifty-plus-year tenure as Prince of Wales. His most famous were Daisy Grenville, the Countess of Warwick (more commonly known as "Babbling Brooke" because her husband had the subsidiary title "Lord Brooke" and because, well, she babbled); the actress Lillie Langtry;^note Supposedly, while the relationship between Langtry and the Prince was fraying, he frustratedly asked her, "Why should I spend any more money on you? I've spend enough on you to build a battleship!" Langtry supposedly replied, "And you've spent enough in me to float it." and finally Alice Keppel, with whom he lived during his reign (1901-1910). Edward's wife, Alexandra of Denmark, was generally OK with this—she seems to mostly have been amused by it, especially given that both he and his mistresses were generally overweight and therefore cut rather comic figures together. (There is a record of Alexandra breaking out in uncontrollable laughter after spying her husband and Lady Brooke walking together through a window.) His dalliances did sometimes get him into trouble; he was famously compelled to testify in a divorce case (the first heir apparent in ages, if not ever, compelled to take the stand) when he was caught carrying on with an MP's wife while the MP was attending sittings of Parliament.
  • And of course, Charles III famously had an affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles for many years throughout their respective first marriages, off and on from 1971, before finally marrying her in 2005, by which time the sting of his ex-wife Diana's death wasn't so fresh. Interestingly, Camilla's great-grandmother (mother of her maternal grandmother Sonia Cubitt) was none other than Alice Keppel. Even more interestingly, Alice Keppel's husband, Camilla's great-grandfather George Keppel, was himself a descendant of...Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond, a.k.a. one of Charles II's aforementioned illegitimate sons. (The upshot? Even if Prince Charles had been allowed to marry Camilla as he had wanted in the late 1970s, his heir would still be descended from one of Charles II's bastards.)
• Practically all the Bourbon kings of Spain have had their fair share of infidelities: For instance, King Alfonso XII was a well-known bohemian and had several paramours, while his son Alfonso XIII reportedly spent time with his mistresses in the presence of his wife, which did nothing to help the monarchy's reputation. And later on, King Emeritus Juan Carlos was often featured on gossip magazines in the company of younger women until a major scandal erupted after it transpired that he was practically living a second life with his latest mistress, which led to rumours about this being a factor on his abdication some time before. Curiously, his son, the current King Felipe VI has been the butt of some jokes about his not having had any allegations of infidelities as of yet: the biggest controversy involving him was in 2007 (while he was still Prince of Asturias) about the seizure of a satirical magazine whose cover depicted him having sex—with his wife.
• Marion Davies, longtime girlfriend of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. Hearst remained married to his wife Millicent until his death, despite having been carrying on with Davies for the last 34 years.
• Simón Bolívar has an interesting variant. While he was only ever married for less than a year (to the Venezuelan-Spanish^note You read that correctly; her family were Venezuelan criollos so rich and important they moved to the mother country to take positions at court. Manuela was therefore born in Spain to Venezuelan parents (of Spanish descent). This is probably why she died young—being born in Spain, she had not been exposed to Venezuela's tropical diseases as a child, and thus succumbed to yellow fever shortly after coming back to Venezuela with Bolívar. aristocrat María Teresa del Toro) in 1802-03, he swore an oath after her sudden death that he would never remarry. Since if Simón Bolívar swears something, he always does it (or at least tries his utmost), he never did remarry...but that didn't keep him from having several long-term mistresses—most famously Manuela Sáenz—and many other, shorter affairs. What makes this so much like a classic affair with a married man is that the long-term ones at least all probably hoped that Bolívar would break his vow and actually marry her, but he never did. The case with Sáenz can also be seen as an inversion, since throughout the relationship, she was married to (if estranged from) one James Thorne, an Englsh expat merchant based in Lima. (Compounding this, Bolívar made extensive use of the networks Manuela had developed in Lima as Thorne's wife—at Manuela's own insistence.^note Note that these Lima networks were purely through Manula's status as Thorne's wife; she was originally from Quito and knew nobody in Lima until her husband introduced her.)

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