After King Edward VIII of England abdicated,
his new wife Wallis Simpson was investigated by the FBI for allegedly conspiring with the Nazis
and having an affair with their ambassador. Keep watching to learn the shocking truth!
While Prince Charles' divorce and subsequent marriage to the also-divorced Camilla Parker
Bowles wouldn't stand in the way of the Prince of Wales' eventual upgrade to King Charles,
that was not the case during the brief reign of King Edward VIII in 1936.
Divorce at that time was a big no-no for royals. In fact the Church of England forbade
the king from marrying a previously married woman whose former husband was still alive.
This made his insistence on marrying Wallis Simpson a deal-breaker.
Not only was she American, but she had also been previously married — not once, but twice.
In 1916, Bessie Wallis Warfield, as she was known then, married Navy pilot Earl
Winfield Spencer Jr. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1927, but the following year,
she married Ernest Simpson, a British-American business executive. The couple took up residence
in London, where she became romantically involved with the heir to the throne of England.
She filed for divorce from Simpson in 1936, after Edward had become king.
Rather than give up Simpson, Edward VIII abdicated the throne on December 11,
1936. During this time, Wallis Simpson was arguably the least popular person in England,
with graffiti at the time reading, quote, "Down with the American harlot."
Simpson was depicted in the press as a temptress
who lured the country's monarch to reluctantly renounce his throne,
a portrayal that is now seen to be both misogynous and one-dimensional — although
Simpson didn't exactly go out of her way to counteract her image. Writer Tanya Gold told NPR,
"She was a very sexually threatening, dominant, rather vulgar, and ambitious
woman. And this is everything that the value system of the time despised."
In fact, the true reason Edward was forced to abdicate may have been somewhat murkier.
According to Gold, The Duke of Windsor was thoroughly unsuited to be king,
which exposed a glaring flaw in a constitutional monarchy in which
sex and the order of birth — not ability — determines who will be monarch. Gold said,
"And so rather than accept that this is a weakness of the system,
it threw up a man who was essentially a mistake, an anomaly,
a man who couldn't fulfill his duty. Far better to say that he was stolen away by this evil woman."
It's not every American divorcee who finds herself at the center of the first royal abdication
in British history — a fact that led Time magazine to put Wallis Simpson on the cover of its annual
Person of the Year issue. Not only did she hold the distinction of being the magazine's most
newsworthy person of 1936, but she was also the first woman to hold that particular honor.
As Time's entry about Simpson pointed out, she beat out a pretty impressive
field of candidates, with the top four male contenders revealed to be
British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek.
While the notion of giving up the throne for love may have seemed romantic, the reality wasn't quite
the fairy tale some may have imagined. After their wedding, the former king and the American
divorcee were given new titles — the Duke and Duchess of Windsor — and banished from England.
The couple first lived in France, then spent the duration of World War II in the Bahamas,
where the duke was made governor. After the war, they returned to France,
where they lived for the rest of their lives, funded by a hefty royal allowance.
According to Anne Sebba's 2011 biography "That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson,
Duchess of Windsor," the later lives of the Duke and Duchess
of Windsor were characterized by aimlessness and heavy drinking.
What's the deal with their wedding cake?
More than 60 years after Wallis Simpson married the Duke of Windsor, the couple made headlines
when a slice of cake from their wedding sold at auction in 1998 for a whopping $29,900.
The sale set a Guinness World Record as the most expensive slice of wedding cake of all time.
Later that same year, the famed wedding cake turned up in Season 9, Episode 18 of "Seinfeld"
in which Elaine eats a slice, not knowing its provenance until too late. When her boss, Mr.
Peterman — who bought the cake at auction — busts her via security camera footage, he explains that
he's not going to reprimand her because digesting 60-year old cake will probably teach her a lesson.
"I have a feeling what you are about to go through is punishment enough."
During World War II, allegations of a pre-war dalliance led to lingering
rumors that Wallis Simpson's sympathies lay not with Britain, but with the Third Reich.
According to a BBC profile on Simpson, the FBI investigated Simpson over her alleged
relationship with Nazi foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, when he was ambassador to Britain
in 1936. During the investigation, the FBI accused Simpson of passing him information.
According to The Guardian, a Benedictine monk with deep royal connections told the FBI that while von
Ribbentrop was stationed in England, the foreign minister sent Simpson 17 carnations each day,
symbolizing the 17 times they had allegedly been intimate. In July, 1940, the duke publicly
remarked that he didn't think England could win a war with Germany and should instead sue for peace.
According to an FBI memo, fears that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor could become Nazi pawns
led to them being sent away to the Bahamas a month later. The memo said in part,
"The British were and always are fearful that the duchess will do or say some thing which
will indicate her Nazi sympathies and support, and consequently it was considered absolutely
essential that the Windsors be removed to a point where they would do absolutely no harm."
As for a motive, an informant told the feds that Simpson had,
quote, "an intense hate for the English since they had kicked them out of England."
Madonna is one celebrity who has held a long fascination with Wallis Simpson. Back in 2009,
The Guardian reported that the entertainer was passionate about
portraying Simpson in a film project she was shepherding into production.
As news grew clearer about the film — titled "W.E." — it emerged that Madonna
wasn't planning to star as Simpson, but would instead be directing, writing, and producing,
with Andrea Riseborough playing Simpson instead. Marie Claire reported that Madonna had written
the queen requesting permission to make a story about Simpson's marriage to her uncle, while The
Guardian claimed Madonna had sought out details from an actual royal, Princess Michael of Kent.
Madonna told the London Evening Standard that she wasn't the only one still obsessed with Simpson.
"I've found that if you bring up King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson at a
dinner party or a social gathering, it's like throwing a Molotov cocktail
into the room. Everyone erupts into an argument about who they were. I mean,
they were very controversial — and continue to be. So, of course, I'm very attracted to that."
"I felt very strongly about righting the wrongs I felt had been done to her."
With a reported budget of $15 million, "W.E." was released in 2011.
The film bombed at the box office with worldwide revenue of just $2 million.
As Simpson's private letters made clear, it didn't
take long before she began second-guessing her decision to divorce her second husband
and marry the Duke of Windsor. According to The Independent, Simpson wrote,
"None of this mess [...] is of my own making. It is the new Peter Pan plan."
Peter Pan, it turns out, was her derisive nickname for her husband, the boy who never
grew up. Biographer Anne Sebba explained that Simpson spent the next 30-plus years living in
luxurious exile, trapped in a relationship she ultimately didn't want to be in. Sebba wrote,
"Nothing else in his life gave him any sense of achievement other than his marriage to
Wallis. For her, the slavish devotion was at times claustrophobic and she was not
afraid to show it [...] Few who knew them well described what they shared as love."
Andrew Morton, author of "Wallis in Love: The Untold Life of the Duchess of Windsor,
the Woman Who Changed the Monarchy," told CTV News that Simpson had a
cruel streak in private and would torment her husband. Morton said,
"He would often say to her, 'Am I going to go to bed in tears again tonight?'"
And Wallis's acquaintance Lady Gladwyn said,
"She became rude, odious, and strange. She spent all her time with effeminate young men,
staying in nightclubs until dawn and sending the Duke home early: 'Buzz off, mosquito.'"
As Simpson's friend Constance Coolidge once said,
"Can you imagine a more terrible fate than to
have to live up publicly to the legend of a love you don't feel?"
According to biographer Andrew Morton, one of the sticking points in their relationship
was the simple and sad fact that Simpson wasn't really in love with Edward. Instead,
according to Morton, Wallis's heart actually belonged to another man named Herman Rogers,
who actually attended Wallis and Edward's wedding.
Morton told CTV News,
"Their relationship, I think, was very,
very intimate. When he remarried after his first wife died, Wallis said,
'He's the only man I've ever loved.'" Her enduring love for Rogers, Morton explained,
contributed to the sense of bitterness and resentment that Simpson felt about her marriage.
"It's kind of a post-modern fairy tale. There is no happy ending."
For long time observers of the Royal Family, the bombshell 2021 interview
between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle with Oprah Winfrey had eerie parallels
to a similar shocking interview that took place a half a century earlier.
In 1969, Wallis Simpson and her husband sat down with British journalist Kenneth
Harris for an interview. Sitting among utter opulence within their posh Paris apartment,
the Duke and Duchess of Windsor — the former now going by the name "David" — appeared
awkward and uncomfortable as they aired old grievances.
The Duke claimed to have, quote, "collided with the establishment," while Simpson recalled all
the hate mail she'd received. When asked if she regretted the path they'd taken,
Simpson offered a diplomatic but telling response, saying,
"I wish it could have been different but I'm extremely happy."
As the Daily Mail recalled, 12 million viewers watched the interview in Britain
alone — and while the utterances of the couple may seem banal and tame by modern standards,
the interview caused quite the stir when it aired. As author Anna Pasternak wrote
in The Daily Telegraph, the scandalous interview made international headlines
for exposing the monarchy's dirty laundry — just like Harry and Meghan.
While Wallis Simpson was accused of many things during her life,
by all accounts intellectual curiosity was not among them. According to USA Today,
"She rarely thought seriously about anything except her next party,
her next purchase of couture clothes or statement jewelry, her next cocktail."
She was, however, aware of people's perception of her,
so she came up with a party trick to appear better read than she actually was.
According to Andrew Morton, Simpson would read the first and last few pages
of whatever the hottest book of the time was. She would also memorize a quote that she would
drop as a conversational opener before expressing her views on the book she had never actually read.
That wasn't her only party trick, though. In 1949,
Simpson wrote an article for an issue of Vogue where she gave humorous tips for hosting the
perfect get together. For example, she suggests 10 people as a good number for a dinner party,
and gives advice on how to rescue a dinner guest who is being excluded from conversation.
Simpson concludes her missive by observing that, quote, "planning a party can be more
fun than the party itself." Advice that seemingly applied to royal marriages as well.
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