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Baby Boys · 4mo

Have you considered that John’s hypersexuality might be a symptom of his being molested as a child?

Very sexy idea for the yaoi and I'm ready to Talk About That Forever, but I wonder if you're talking about actual John?

In reality, I don't know that there is That much evidence for a hypersexual John? He is definitely busy and has a fair number of children - somewhere between 9 and 11 illegitimate children - and is criticized for having sex with the wives and daughters of barons (true or not? It's hard to tell), but I don't find Actual John to be described as that much more sexual than other kings of the period. Henry I is much more... prolific and John seems to have a spent a large part of his youth and early adulthood married to someone who he either wasn't sleeping with or who wasn't able to have children, so it doesn't totally surprise me that he was heavy on mistresses in the early part of his life. There is definitely that note that John would have rather spent the day in bed with his wife than fight for Normandy, but I don't really read that as John being inappropriately sexual, more that he unwilling or uninterested in participating in that particular defensive militarism. Of course, as the baby of the family and as someone who wasn't expected early on to be much more than a marriage pawn for his father, we know very very little about John's early life and I severely doubt that information about any particular inappropriate behaviors would have been chronicled? John was shuttled around to many a home in his early years and spent a lot of time in the house of Henry the Young King, in the presence of Henry's knights and tournament team. Henry's household skewed younger and rougher than the religious sisters and brothers of Fontevraud where toddler John was raised, so it wouldn't be out of the question for young John to have been exposed to a more raucous sort of lifestyle.

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