Jane Digby el Mezrab

Born an English aristocrat in the early 1800's, Jane Digby must have been fairly easily bored. We can guess this because she took four husbands and many lovers, including King Ludwig I of Bavaria; his son, King Otto of Greece; and who knows how many statesmen and generals.

Divorced from her first husband -- the 2nd Baron of Ellenborough -- by an act of Parliament for her "scandalous life," Digby wrecked emotional havoc across Europe in her effort to keep herself occupied. Once, when she tired of royalty, she hooked up for a while with a Greek revolutionary, living with him in caves and hunting on horseback for their dinner.

When she was forty-six (and he was twenty-six!), she married a Syrian sheikh under Muslim law, added el Mezrab to her name, learned Arabic ( in addition to the eight languages she already knew), started dressing Arab style, and began living six months per year in a goat-hair tent in the desert. And the happy couple stayed together until she died nearly three decades later. An in-your-face woman can really get someone's attention. Even a sheikh. Half her age.