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King James I What do we really know about his male lovers?
The Guardian
|March 09, 2024
In 1617, King James I of England addressed the privy council about the young man he had recently promoted.
"I, James, am neither God nor an angel, but a man like any other," he said. "Therefore I act like a man. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else... Christ had his John, and I have my George." "His" George was George Villiers, the lowly second son of a minor gentleman from Leicestershire, who had become an earl and one of the king's closest aides. But he was much more than that.
For several years, most historians accept, Villiers had been not only the king's favourite courtier but his lover - a man whom James would later describe as his "sweet child and wife", writing that he would rather be banished "than live a sorrowful widow's life without you".
Or as a contemporary French poem put it: "It is well known that the King of England/Fucks the Duke of Buckingham." The relationship between the two men is the subject of a new Sky Atlantic drama, Mary & George, which also dramatises the role played by Villiers' mother, Mary, in plotting her son's social ascent by means of the king's bed.
This story is from the March 09, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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