John of Gaunt III's rule was becoming unpopular due to high taxation and his affair with Alice Perrers, political opinion closely associated the Duke of Lancaster with the failing government of the 1370s. Furthermore, while King Edward and the Prince of Wales were popular heroes due to their successes on the battlefield, John of Gaunt had not won equivalent military renown that could have bolstered his reputation. Although he fought in the Battle of Nájera (1367), for example, his later military projects proved unsuccessful. When Edward III died in 1377 and John's ten-year-old nephew succeeded as Richard II of England, John's influence strengthened.
English and British royal mistress Melusine von der Schulenburg, who was so tall and scrawny that she was nicknamed "the maypole". Sophia von Kielmansegg, sometimes referred to as a mistress of George I, was actually his morganatic half-sister; they were both children of Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover. She was known to compete for influence with Melusine and assumed, or pretended, to be a mistress by the British courtiers. George II had only one principal mistress, Henrietta Howard, who maintained this station for well over a decade. It is probable that George II considered having a mistress necessary, for he was very much in love