The 'aristocratic tart' who seduced King Edward VII aged 16

Passions ran high in the Victorian world, and nowhere higher than in royal circles.

Wayward Irish aristocrat Lady Olivia Fitzpatrick was a sexual predator who was dismissed from the royal court by Queen Victoria for trying to seduce her husband Prince Albert. But pretty soon Olivia was back - with her eyes now firmly set on Victoria's son, the Prince of Wales. He was 17 years her junior.

That didn't happen either – but the undaunted Lady Olivia pushed her teenage daughter Patsy forward into the lustful Prince's path.

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

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

He was unstoppable. In his lifetime, there would be many more high-born ladies only 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 has been described as 'sexually lawless'. 

The only rule in Victorian times was 'thou shalt not be found out' – and so some scheme had to be quickly devised by the wily Lady Olivia to allow the Prince access to her daughter without tongues beginning to wag.

Step forward the unwitting William Cornwallis-West, 19 years Patsy's senior, whose home Ruthin Castle in Denbighshire was a convenient ride away from a favourite country house where Edward often stayed - making him an ideal husband. 

And while William went travelling, the prince would come to call.

There was something extra-special about Patsy which made Edward, over the years, keep coming back for more. With golden hair, an hour-glass figure and 'a complexion like apple blossom' she oozed 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 still meet clandestinely.

Urged on by her ruthlessly ambitious mother, Patsy used her closeness to the throne to engineer advantageous marriages for her children – one daughter wed the fabulously wealthy Duke of Westminster, another a German prince, and her son tied the knot with Lady Randolph Churchill – mother of wartime prime minister Winston Churchill – as her second husband.

It's 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 his mistress first taken by actress Lillie Langtry and then, lastingly, by the present Queen Camilla's great-grandmother Alice Keppel – Patsy looked for love elsewhere.

As the First World War raged in Europe Patrick Barrett, a young working-class soldier, was invalided home suffering from wounds and shell-shock. Of 3,000 men in his regiment, the Royal Welch [NB correct spelling] Fusiliers, all but 80 were dead in the first six months of the war,

Patsy's husband William was the honrary colonel of the Fusiliers, so the young soldier was invited to come and recuperate on the family estate.

And the 'sexually lawless' Patsy fell for him. She was 59, Barrett was just 25 – and what happened next ballooned into a high-profile and devastating sex scandal which would ultimately destroy Patsy and her husband.

That a woman in her position chased a common soldier was scandal enough. That the soldier was from her husband's regiment made it worse - she was dubbed 'the aristocratic tart'. And when the whole story came out, it emerged that Patsy had bombarded the unworldly young man with cocktail of letters, poetry, and promises of promotion – he was powerless to resist her amorous onslaught.

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

The story was the other way round, of course – but nobody believed Barrett was the innocent party. Deeply shamed by the malicious gossip, he called off the relationship, not guessing the scandal his rejection would trigger.

Humiliated, Patsy went back to the high-ranking officers she'd persuaded to make Barrett an officer and demanded they reverse his promotion. A Court of Inquiry was set up in January 1917 to look into her meddling in army affairs during the height of war – and the story became public.

The Cornwallis-Wests were humiliated by the subequent publicity and the shame and disgrace which enveloped 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 four kingdoms' her husband had called her - disappeared from view and, at the age of 64, died also.