Passions ran high in the Victorian world and nowhere more so than in royal circles.

Lady Olivia Fitzpatrick, capricious Irish aristocrat, was a sexual predator who was dismissed from the royal court by Queen Victoria for trying to seduce her husband, Prince Albert. But soon enough Olivia was back – with her eyes now set on Victoria’s son, the Prince of Wales. He was 17 years younger than her.

That didn’t happen either – but the unhinged Lady Olivia pushed her teenage daughter Patsy into the way of the lustful prince.

At the time, Patsy – born Mary Adelaide Virginia Eupatoria FitzPatrick – was just 16, while the prince was 29 and should have known better. But passion was Edward’s business,

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

He was unstoppable. In his lifetime, there would be several ladies of high birth all too willing to submit to his unquenchable lust—but Patsy was the youngest.

And so he took Patsy’s virginity with encouragement from the teenager who was described as “sexually wicked”.

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 Queen Camilla’s great-grandmother Alice Keppel.

Mary Cornwallis-West (1958 – 1920) with a young girl, probably one of her daughters, circa 1880. The Prince of Wales is rumored to have had 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 she was a girl of 16 and had already had 13 mistresses before he met her.

The only rule in the Victorian era was ‘thou shalt not be found out’ – and so a scheme had to be quickly devised by the wily Lady Olivia to allow the Prince access to her daughter without tongues wagging.

Step forward, unwittingly, William Cornwallis-West, 19 years Patsy’s senior, whose home Ruthin Castle in Denbighshire was a convenient journey from a favorite country house where Edward often stayed – making him a ideal husband.

And as William went on his journey, the prince came to call.

There was something extra special about Patsy that kept Edward, over the years, coming back for more. With golden hair, an hourglass figure and “a complexion like an apple blossom”, she exuded sex appeal.

Socially, after her marriage she rode the crest of a wave – her husband was Lord Lieutenant of Denbighshire – and even after Edward became king, the couple would continue to meet clandestinely.

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 Queen Camilla’s great-grandmother Alice Keppel.

Lady Olivia, Patsy’s mother, devised a plan to allow the Prince access to her daughter without tongues wagging. Step forward, unwittingly, William Cornwallis-West, 19 years Patsy’s senior

William’s family home was Ruthin Castle in Denbighshire, which was a convenient journey away from a country house that Edward often visited.

Urged on by her ruthlessly ambitious mother, Patsy used her proximity to the throne to create advantageous marriages for her children – one daughter married the fabulously wealthy Duke of Westminster, another a German prince, and her son married with Lady Randolph Churchill – mother. of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill – as her second husband.

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

But as the passion faded from her relationship with Edward – her place as mistress taken first by the actress Lillie Langtry and then, lastingly, by the great-grandmother of the current Queen Camilla, Alice Keppel – Patsy looked for love elsewhere.

As the First World War broke out in Europe, Patrick Barrett, a young working-class soldier, was disabled at home, suffering from wounds and shell shock. Of the 3,000 men in his regiment, the Royal Welch Fusiliers (correct spelling NB), 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 was married to Prince Henry von Pless, one of Germany’s wealthiest nobles.

As the passion faded from Patsy’s relationship with Edward, her place as mistress was taken by actress Lillie Langtry

After Lillie Langtry came the famous Alice Keppel, Queen Camilla’s great-grandmother

When “sexually wicked” Patsy looked elsewhere for love, she fell in love with an ordinary soldier, which turned into a 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 on the family estate.

And the “sexually wicked” Patsy fell in love with him. She was 59, Barrett just 25 – and what happened next turned into a devastating, high-profile sex scandal that would ultimately destroy Patsy and her husband.

That a woman in her position pursued an ordinary soldier was scandalous enough. The fact that the soldier was from her husband’s regiment made it worse – she was nicknamed the “aristocratic tart”. And when the whole story came out, it emerged that Patsy had bombarded the unearthly young man with a cocktail of letters, poetry and promises of promotion – he was powerless to resist her amorous onslaught.

Using her influence – as the upper classes could in those days – she promoted Barrett to the rank of officer. But in those class-obsessed days, Barrett’s origins made him an alien figure in the officers’ mess, and soon the story began to circulate that he had seduced a woman old enough to be his mother to get his undeserved promotion.

The story was the other way around, of course – but no one believed Barrett was the innocent party. Deeply ashamed of the malicious gossip, he called off the relationship, not guessing the scandal that his rejection would cause.

Humiliated, Patsy returned to the senior officers she had persuaded to make Barrett an officer and demanded that they rescind his promotion. A Court of Inquiry was set up in January 1917 to look into her meddling in army affairs at the height of the war – and the story became public.

The Cornwallis-Wests were humiliated by the subsequent publicity and the shame and disgrace that engulfed them both killed Patsy’s husband within weeks – he died that summer.

And she, once the mistress of a king and the toast of high society—”the most beautiful woman in all the four kingdoms,” her husband had called her—disappeared from view, and at the age of 64, she too died.