George IV

George IV spent most of his life waiting to become king, first a pleasure-loving and rebellious Prince of Wales during the 60-year reign of his father, George III, and for 10 years as Prince Regent, when his father went mad. The days are very long when you have nothing to do he once wrote plaintively, but he did his best to fill them with pleasure women, art, food, wine, fashion, architecture. He presided over the creation of the Regency style, which came to epitomize the era and was, with Charles I, the most artisitically literate of all British kings.