The scandalous life of Alice Keppel: Queen Camilla's great grandmother

Every empire keeps a ledger it never prints. Kings collect the statues, the coins, the boulevards named after their embalmed selves, and off in the margin sits the woman who knew precisely where the royal secrets slept and what each one cost to keep quiet.
France worshipped Madame de Pompadour, who redecorated an entire monarchy while advising it on how to lose a war.
London cheered Nell Gwyn, the orange-seller who talked her way out of the theatre pit and into the bed of Charles II without once pretending the arrangement embarrassed her.
Each generation coughs up one of these women, and the clever ones grasped a fact the history books still blush to record: nearness to a crown pays better than any title on offer.
Then came Alice, and the whole grubby trade found its quiet master. Alice Frederica Keppel turned the role of royal mistress into something far closer to a profession than a scandal, running a king's temper, his diet, his letters to the men who governed the country, and his cash, then strolling away richer than most of the aristocrats who sneered at her behind their painted fans.