Royal marriages were most often political and couples did not always succeed in the fields of love or intercourse. What mattered was the results, that is the offspring ...
Several Polish kings compete in the category of the number of begotten children, reaching double-digit values. Which rulers had such good health, happiness, charm and ... extremely resistant partners?
It should be remembered, however, that with some kings it is difficult to determine the true number of children who have conceived, so the numbers are only approximate.
Kazimierz Płodny
Kazimierz Jagiellończyk and Elżbieta Rakuszanka were the most frequent couple at the top:they were chosen for political reasons. They married in 1454, just before the outbreak of the Thirteen Years' War. At this point, the king was 27 and his queen was 17.
According to historians, Elizabeth was not a beautiful woman. In her portraits we see a woman with a puffy face and narrow lips. Rumor has it that the Jagiellonian, when he saw her for the first time, fled to his chamber terrified. Well, apparently he soon discovered the more non-obvious side of the charms of Albrecht II Habsburg's daughter ...
Elżbieta Rakuszanka is also called the mother of kings
The marriage lived together for 38 years, during which Elżbieta gave birth to as many as thirteen children! The first of them was born as early as 1455, and the last descendant was born by the Queen in 1482, i.e. 28 years later. There is a reason Elizabeth was hailed "the mother of kings."
"Kazimierz almost always traveled with the queen and children" - we read in "The Lords of Poland" by Mirosław Maciorowski and Beata Maciejewska - "[...] This shows the relationship between them:wife, daughters and sons were almost always with him. Kazimierz was a monogamous ruler, there are no traces of his spectacular romances in the sources. "
Something similar can by no means be said of another fertile king…
August the Strong in his loins
August II the Strong Sas broke not only horseshoes. As it turns out, he was a tireless breaker of women's hearts, although officially ... he had only one descendant, Augustus III, Saxon Wettin, with his wife Krystyna Eberhardna Hohenzollern.
August II Sas was famous for his extraordinary sexual temperament, not only duchesses, countesses, townspeople, and even ordinary plebeians passed through his electoral and royal beds. Some contemporaries maliciously emphasized that August II's unbridled temperament contributed to the growth of the population in Dresden and Warsaw
- writes Janusz Kubicki in an article in Practical Gynecology. Such an image suits his impulsive temperament, and at the same time the respect that he has for his surroundings.
August II the Strong had many unofficial descendants
But were the rumors about his uncontrollable lust really true?
Some studies, and most of all popular books, show him as a man who did nothing else but chased after women, and from different states. He was to have several dozen lovers and about 300 illegitimate children. But in reality he didn't have much time to play like this because he was working a lot
- said Dr. Andrzej K. Link-Lenczowski on the pages of "Lords of Poland". However, if at least half of the descendants attributed to him were actually conceived, Augustus the Strong would still remain strong - a candidate for the most prolific king of Poland.
No matter how much truth there is in the number of "about 300 descendants", we know for sure today that August had many lovers and did not have to hide with them. Among them were Aurora von Königsmarck, with whom he fathered Maurycy Saski, Anna Aloisia - Countess of Esterle, Urszula Katarzyna von Altenbockum, Henrietta Renard ... and many others.
Apparently, the king highly appreciated the oriental beauty named Fatima, according to historians of Turkish or Circassian origin. This one bore him two children.
Altogether, "officially" August only confessed to eight children.
Zygmunt and two sisters
An anonymous author wrote to King Sigismund III Vasa:"Many virgins have lost their chastity, indulging in your greedy love!". Despite his relatively successful marriages, first with Anna of Habsburg and later with Constance of Habsburg, he was credited with numerous romances.
Interestingly, the death of the second wife is considered the "beginning of the end" of the king. This one was supposed to touch him a lot, and the label of "womanizer" was simply a holdover from years before his first wedding.
Zygmunt III Waza married ... sisters
Zygmunt III Waza fathered five children with his first wife, three of whom died in infancy. Anna was sick and could not stand the last birth - John the Baptist Gemnua, brought from Venice, performed a caesarean section on the already dead queen. Unfortunately, the newborn baby died within the next minutes.
Vasa's second wife gave birth to seven children, but these descendants also did not survive long.
Of both relationships, they survived to adulthood like Kazimierz, the later king of Poland, as well as Jan Albert, the bishop of Kraków, and Karol Ferdynand, the bishop of Płock.
Kazimierz without a son
King Casimir III the Great had four wives and five children - only girls. Whether for pragmatic reasons (wanting a male offspring) or purely hedonistic reasons, he continued his efforts, also trying his hand at illegitimacy.
He liked to play.
[...] when in 1341 he went to Prague to marry the daughter of John of Luxemburg, and his fiancée died, he continued marital negotiations and spent three months partying hard on the Vltava at his own expense
- we read in "The Lords of Poland". He was then offered a second wife (after the deceased Anna-Aldona, who gave birth to Kazimierz's first two daughters), Adelaide. The couple had no children, and for this reason the king pushed the queen away from him and started another rowdy thrust, during which he was said to be going crazy with numerous lovers and harlots.
Casimir the Great at Esterka Władysław Łuszczkiewicz
In secret, while still the husband of Adelaide, he married another woman - beautiful Krystyna Rokiczana. But he did not stay with her for a long time - perhaps to keep her good name, or perhaps because of rumors that Rokiczana was an agent of the Luxemburgs.
Two sons - Niemierza and Pełka - were born to Kazimierz by a Jewish woman, Esterka, another lovely lover. Długosz even states that the privileges of the Chosen Nation on the part of the king were precisely her merit.
To get married again, the king used a forged papal bull, which of course caused a scandal. Officially, according to the church, he was still not divorced from his first wife, so Jadwiga was not “fully” recognized. The Polish church, however, accepted this relationship, from which "unfortunately" three girls were born. Kazimierz passed away in 1370, leaving no legal male offspring. Before he became ill, he adopted his grandson, Kaźek Słupski, and prescribed him the lands of Dobrzyń, Sieradz and Łęczyca, Bydgoszcz, Kruszwica, Wielatowo and Wałcz.
Declassified by Habsburg
Although he was not the ruler of Poland, but the king of Bohemia, Hungary and Slovakia, then the king of Germany and finally the Holy Roman Emperor, he definitely deserves an honorary mention in the list of fertile people in power. His wife was Anna Jagiellonka, who, as we read in Janusz Kubicki's article,
[...] bore Ferdinand as many as fifteen children (she died at the age of only 44, exhausted from childbirth and puerperium), in line with the age-old Habsburg motto:"let others wage wars and you Austria marry.