10 Hidden Royal Romances You Might Not Know

While royal marriages were often strategic, aimed at forging alliances, accumulating wealth, and gaining power, a fortunate few managed to find genuine love alongside their duties. For some, love even overshadowed political ambitions. If tales of King Henry VIII’s numerous marriages or the tumultuous bond between Princess Diana and King Charles III have grown tiresome, delve into these 10 overlooked royal romances that history seldom highlights. 

1. Judith, Queen of Wessex and Count Baldwin

Prior to the unification of England in 927, the land was divided into smaller kingdoms, including Wessex, situated along the southern coast. Like much of northern Europe during this period, Wessex faced constant threats from Viking raids. To secure protection, King Æthelwulf sought an alliance through marriage. In October 856, he wed Judith, the 12-year-old daughter of Charles II, the King of West Francia (modern-day France).

Judith’s lineage as a member of the influential Carolingian dynasty elevated her status, making her the first anointed Queen of Wessex. However, her husband’s death just two years later led to an unexpected turn. Her stepson, Æthelbald, married her, an act condemned by a contemporary chronicler as “against God's prohibition and Christian dignity, and also contrary to the practice of all pagans,” bringing “great disgrace from all who heard of it.”

Æthelbald’s death two years later left Judith a widow for the second time at the age of 16. She returned to West Francia, where her father confined her to a religious house, a common fate for Carolingian princesses. However, Judith refused to accept a life of seclusion as a nun.

Little is known about Count Baldwin’s origins, but it’s possible he met Judith before her first marriage. By Christmas 861, the two had eloped, allegedly with her brother Louis’s consent (some sources claim Judith was abducted, while others suggest she married Baldwin willingly). Charles II disapproved of the union, excommunicating Baldwin and launching a widespread search. Despite his efforts, the couple fled to Rome. Only the looming threat of Baldwin allying with the Vikings forced Charles II to pardon them. 

In 863, the couple returned to West Francia, where Baldwin was appointed Margrave of Flanders. Together, they governed the southern region effectively for at least seven years, defending against Viking invasions and maintaining loyalty to the Frankish kings. While Baldwin’s death is recorded in 879, Judith’s ultimate fate remains a mystery.

2. Edward I and Eleanor of Castile 

Edward I is renowned in history as a formidable warrior, but he was also a devoted and loving husband. His deep affection for his wife, Eleanor of Castile, inspired him to create some of England’s most touching tributes to love.

Edward I was 15 and Eleanor just 13 when they married in November 1254, their union arranged by their fathers, as was customary for medieval royal marriages. Eleanor bore their first child, a daughter, just nine months later. Throughout their marriage, they were seldom apart, even during Edward’s crusades to the Holy Land or military campaigns in Wales. Despite Eleanor’s unpopularity in England, Edward remained fiercely devoted to her. She gave birth to seven children before becoming queen in 1272 and eight more afterward. Tragically, only one of their five sons, the ill-fated Edward II, survived to adulthood.

In November 1290, Eleanor passed away at 49 in the village of Harby due to complications from malaria, with Edward I by her side. Her death left him so heartbroken that government operations ceased for three days. Eleanor’s body was carried to London, and Edward commissioned a cross to be built at each of the 12 stops her funeral procession made overnight, three of which still stand today. That January, he wrote to the Abbot of Cluny, expressing his undying love for his wife, “whom in life we dearly cherished, and whom in death we cannot cease to love.”

3. Joan of Acre and Ralph de Monthermer 

Joan, the seventh child of Edward I and Eleanor, was born in Acre in the Holy Land in 1272 and raised by her maternal grandmother in Ponthieu. As a king’s daughter, her marriage was destined to serve dynastic purposes. In 1290, she wed Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, her father’s most influential baron. She was 18, and he was 47.

The couple had four children before the earl’s death in 1295. Afterward, Joan grew close to her late husband’s Welsh squire, Ralph de Monthermer. Despite the strict prohibition against such a union due to their difference in rank, they secretly married before January 1297. This bold act defied her father’s plans for a second dynastic marriage to Amadeus V, Count of Savoy, and brought humiliation to the king.

De Monthermer was imprisoned, and Joan’s lands were seized by the crown. Despite this, she remained steadfast in her loyalty to her husband and eventually convinced her father to accept their union. Upon his release, de Monthermer was granted the earldom of Gloucester in Joan’s place and became a devoted ally to his father-in-law. Joan gave birth to their first child in October 1297 and had two more children before her untimely death in 1307 at the age of 35.

4. Edward, Prince of Wales, and Joan of Kent

Joan of Kent, the granddaughter of Edward I, appears to have inherited the same free-spirited nature as her aunt, Joan of Acre. She had known her cousin Edward the Black Prince (son of Edward III) since childhood, but he was not her first choice for a husband. At just 13, in the spring of 1340, she secretly wed Sir Thomas Holland without the king’s consent, later entering into a bigamous marriage with William Montagu, Earl of Salisbury. It wasn’t until 1349 that the matter was resolved, and Joan was officially recognized as Holland’s lawful wife. In 1352, she became the Countess of Kent in her own right and remained with Holland until his death in December 1360. 

If the Black Prince had harbored secret feelings for his cousin, he seized the opportunity to act. Despite ongoing talks about a potential marriage to Margaret of Flanders, he successfully courted Joan within four months. Though Joan was wealthy, her complicated marital history posed a risk of their children being deemed illegitimate. Undeterred by this, Edward, deeply in love, spent six months persuading the Pope to grant them permission to marry, even paying a substantial fee to the church. They finally tied the knot in October 1361.

Edward sent Joan heartfelt letters from the battlefield, and the Chandos Herald documented their affectionate displays, such as walking hand-in-hand [PDF]. When the Black Prince passed away in 1376, the Herald described Joan’s profound grief: “the lovely and noble Princess felt such grief at heart that her heart was nigh breaking. Of lamentation and sighing, of crying aloud and sorrowing, there was so great a noise that there was no man living in the world, if he had beheld the grief, but would have had pity at heart.” Their son ascended as Richard II a year later.

5. Henry IV and Joan of Navarre

It is highly likely that Henry of Lancaster and Joan of Navarre first crossed paths when she visited England for Richard II’s wedding in 1396. At the time, Henry was a widower, while Joan was accompanied by her husband, John IV, Duke of Brittany, whom she had married in 1386. 

Both faced significant upheavals in 1399: Henry IV ascended to the English throne in October after deposing his cousin Richard II, and Joan’s husband passed away that November. Over the following years, the two maintained regular communication. 

In March 1402, Joan dispatched an ambassador to England to discuss their marriage. Henry IV agreed, even though the union offered minimal political or financial benefits. Similarly, Joan had to surrender her regency and control over her sons. Within six days, the Pope granted them permission to marry, and they were married by proxy in just two weeks—an exceptionally swift arrangement for a royal wedding. 

Unlike many medieval monarchs, Henry IV remained devoted to his wife, and their affection for each other was widely noted. After Henry’s death in 1413, Joan stayed in England and chose to be buried beside him in Canterbury Cathedral, in the tomb she had commissioned for them both.

6. Dowager Queen Catherine and Owen Tudor

Catherine of Valois, the daughter of Charles VI, King of France, arrived in England as the bride of Henry V in 1420. Their marriage lasted only two years, with Henry V frequently absent due to his ongoing campaigns in France. He died during one such campaign, leaving Catherine a widow at 20, with their infant son, Henry VI, just 9 months old.

Concerns about Catherine’s future quickly arose. As both the daughter and mother of a king, any remarriage could grant her new husband immense influence and power. To prevent this, Parliament enacted a statute requiring her to obtain consent before remarrying. 

One chronicler noted that Catherine was already suspected of struggling to “fully restrain her carnal desires.” Sometime after 1428, she began a relationship with Owen Tudor, a Welsh squire. The details of their meeting remain a mystery, but their affair was undeniably scandalous due to the vast difference in their social status. Their relationship was kept entirely secret. 

There is no official record of their marriage, and it’s possible that only her closest household members were aware of it. Catherine and Tudor had at least four children, who were largely kept away from court and raised in religious settings. Even their birthdates are uncertain. Tudor never sought to leverage his connection to Catherine for political gain, and his only notable privilege was being granted the rights of an Englishman in 1432.

Catherine passed away shortly after giving birth to her daughter in 1437. Henry VI ensured his half-siblings were well cared for, and they remained loyal to him throughout their lives. Parliament eventually recognized them as legitimate, placing them in the line of succession. In 1485, their grandson ascended the throne as Henry VII, founding the Tudor dynasty. 

7. Jacquetta of Luxembourg and Sir Richard Woodville

At 17, Jacquetta married John, Duke of Bedford, the 43-year-old brother of the late Henry V, in 1433. As the duke was heir presumptive to the English throne, Jacquetta became the second most prominent woman in England. However, the duke passed away just two years later. 

Jacquetta had likely known Sir Richard Woodville for much, if not all, of her married life. He was a knight in her late husband’s service, a minor nobleman far below her station. Aware that marrying him without Henry VI’s consent would cause significant issues, Jacquetta and Woodville chose to wed in secret before March 1437.

The couple spent their early married years in France before returning to England, where their first child, Elizabeth, was born around 1437. Their fortunes declined after Henry VI was deposed in 1461, but they adapted by shifting their allegiance from the House of Lancaster to the House of York during the Wars of the Roses. Their eldest daughter, Elizabeth, married Edward IV in a secret ceremony in 1464.

Jacquetta and Woodville quickly rose to prominence, gaining influence—and making enemies. Jacquetta was widowed again in 1469 when Woodville and their son John were executed.

8. Cecily of York and Sir Thomas Kyme

Cecily, born in 1469, was Jacquetta’s granddaughter. Her first marriage, arranged by her uncle Richard III to Ralph Scrope in 1485, was annulled a year later following the king’s downfall. Her second marriage, arranged in 1488 to John, Viscount Welles, Henry VII’s uncle and 20 years her senior, was intended to curb her claim to the throne through her father. Despite its political nature, the marriage was loving and happy. His death in 1498 or 1499 left Cecily heartbroken. 

After a period of mourning, Cecily returned to court in 1501 and met Sir Thomas Kyme, a Lincolnshire squire, within the next two years. As a Yorkist princess still of marriageable age, any potential union carried significant political weight.

Cecily was aware that her relationship with Kyme would jeopardize her inheritance from the Welles estates. Nevertheless, they married between 1502 and 1504. As expected, Henry VII confiscated her lands, though Kyme avoided the imprisonment typically faced by men who married without royal consent. This leniency may have been due to the protection offered by Margaret Beaufort, Cecily’s sister-in-law through her prior marriage to Welles. Cecily brokered a truce with the king, and the couple retreated from court, remaining together until Cecily’s death in 1507.

9. James II and Anne Hyde

James II’s early years were shaped by the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which culminated in the execution of his father, Charles I. At 15, in 1648, he fled England and lived in exile as the heir presumptive to his brother Charles II. Despite the uncertainty of their return to England, his choice of a wife remained a critical decision—one that demanded careful consideration.

James’s choice, however, surprised everyone. Anne Hyde, the daughter of his late father’s advisor, resided at the court of his sister Mary, Princess of Orange. The court was infamous for its flirtatious and scandalous atmosphere, and Hyde was well-liked for her lively personality. One chronicler noted that “no one at the court of Holland outshone her.”

In 1656, Hyde accompanied Princess Mary to Paris to visit the princess’s mother, Dowager Queen Henrietta Maria. Despite her father’s warnings—due to the queen’s dislike for their family—Hyde went anyway. It was in Paris that she met James II, who eventually vowed to marry her.

Hyde was pregnant when she and James returned to England following the monarchy’s restoration. When their secret engagement came to light, her father pressured King Charles II to imprison her. However, the king, though displeased, believed Hyde would positively influence James II, remarking that he was “confident that the troublesome individuals who had too much sway over his brother and often led him astray would no longer corrupt him. He trusted she would thwart any ill-advised actions, and thus, he admitted he was pleased with the match.”

Hyde and James married in September 1660. Despite James’s infidelity, he never pursued a divorce. 

10. George VI and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was born in August 1900 to the Scottish Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. She enjoyed a privileged and affectionate upbringing, developing her signature charm and lively personality early on. In contrast, the future George VI—then known as Albert, Duke of York, or simply Bertie—was shy, reserved, and struggled with a stammer that made him insecure. 

Bowes-Lyon and Bertie first crossed paths in June 1920 at a London society dance, where Bertie later confessed he instantly fell for her. Despite being pursued by many suitors, the Duke of York was determined to win her over, frequently visiting Glamis Castle in Scotland to spend time with her. By February 1920, he felt ready to propose.

A proposal from a royal duke was likely beyond her parents’ wildest dreams, but Bowes-Lyon declined. Undeterred, the Duke of York, accompanied by his mother, visited Glamis in September. Queen Mary was immediately charmed by her and wrote that she was convinced Bowes-Lyon was “the one girl who could make Bertie happy.”

However, the queen chose not to intervene, and Bowes-Lyon and the Duke of York didn’t meet again until his sister’s wedding in February 1922. He proposed once more in March, but she declined again. In January 1923, a newspaper falsely reported that Bowes-Lyon was about to become engaged to his older brother, the Prince of Wales and heir to the throne. This rumor may have prompted Bertie to propose to her one final time.

This time, she accepted. Bowes-Lyon’s mother recalled that even then, she was “torn between her desire to make Bertie happy and her fear of the immense responsibilities this marriage would bring.”

Neither could have foreseen the magnitude of the responsibilities ahead. In 1936, Edward VIII abdicated, and the Duke of York ascended as George VI. Bowes-Lyon wrote that “We are so deeply united, relying heavily on one another,” a bond that endured until his passing in 1952.