Darling is depicted as an exaggerated parody on old-school British Shakespearian stage actors: pompous, bombastic, profligate and pretentious in his use of literary quotes, and habitually referring to famous, real-life actors in familiar terms (such as "Dear old Larry" for Sir Laurence Olivier).
In Ford Madox Ford's trilogy of historical novels, The Fifth Queen, the character Magister Nicholas Udal is a decidedly heterosexual profligate, who serves as Latin tutor to Mary I of England and Henry VIII's "fifth queen," Katharine Howard.
The patriarch Shemon VII Ishoyahb, consecrated either towards the end of 1538 or early in 1539, was highly unpopular due to his illicit activities in profligate life, selling church properties and allowing the use of concubines.
The plot begins in the exceedingly luxurious and profligate court of the Chinese Emperor Shisōretsu (思宋烈; actually Chongzhen Emperor of the Ming dynasty), in May 1644.
Thomas Lyttelton, 2nd Baron Lyttelton (1744–1779), British MP for Bewdley, 1768 and profligate, dubbed "the wicked Lord Lyttelton" and "bad Lord Lyttelton"
He was granted by Louis XI a pension of 12,000 crowns annually which was to be distributed between himself, Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset, Sir John Howard (later Duke of Norfolk), Sir Thomas Montgomery, and some other of the profligate courtiers.
Forty years after his death, Jonathan Swift in his celebrated attack on William Whitshed, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, called him " as vile and profligate a villain as Scroggs".