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The reign of Queen Vicotria, popularly known as the Victorian age, is known best for a Christian severity the British Empire successfully transplanted on its colonial population everywhere: Prudery.
In England, the Victorian age saw some of the commonly used words for animals such as “bitch” and “stallion” disappearing from use due to its sexual overtones.
The word “leg” was too suggestive and was replaced by “limb”. Piano and table legs were covered in lace and sheet to hide “nudity.” Even talking about the fertilisation of flowers was regarded as pornography.
But even as squeamishness became the public face of the Empire, in private, Queen Victoria was far from the austere or prudish woman she was portrayed to be.
In fact, Victoria was someone who loved sex with a passion, so much so that one of her favourite paintings that adorned her apartment was that of naked nymphs taking bath, while a prince secretly looked on. The painting was a gift to her husband Prince Albert, who himself was a highly sexed man.
Albert had a special lever attached to his bedside that would allow him to lock the door, while having sex with the queen, thus preventing any interruption.
The popular genital piercing among men, which some believe enhances sexual pleasure, is named after him. (People who go for ‘Prince Albert’ have a metal ring pierced through the skin at the top of the penis.) But for Albert, the piercing also served a different purpose. The prince was known to get sudden and unwanted erections in public, often proving to be a source of great embarrassment for the queen. So the genital piercing or the cock ring, which was tied to his thigh with a thin cord, was said to have kept his penis in place in case of erection. The erotic idiosyncrasy no doubt would have amused the queen, because together, they went on to have nine children in just 15 years.
So next time, if someone talks about the “puritanism” of the Victorian age, it’s worth asking if it was actually prudery or hypocrisy the British were exporting in the name of their queen.