The English don’t mind if their king has a mistress provided she is what they call “a good sort.” This can mean English, a daughter of the people, and happy-go-lucky, like Charles II’s Nell Gwyn. Or English, an upper-middle-class widow, and predictable, like Edward VII’s Alice Keppel. The job of the mistress is to keep the king calm and content so that he can do his job.
The Era of Good Sortness crashed and burned in 1936 when George V died and the crown passed to his 41-year-old bachelor son Edward VIII, whose twice-married American mistress commented on royal mourning protocol in the idiom of her people, the wisecrack: “I haven’t worn black stockings since I gave up the can-can.”
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