Wallis simpson children

She was the thrice-married American divorcee for whom a king gave up his crown, a woman so controversial that even today, nearly 50 years after her death, mere mention of her name can raise eyebrows. Wallis Simpson remains one of the most polarizing figures in 20th century British history, a complicated woman who inspired both admiration and revulsion in her lifetime. But beyond the simplistic labels of "gold digger" or "romantic heroine," who was the real Wallis Simpson?

A Baltimore Belle‘s Beginnings

Born Bessie Wallis Warfield in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania on June 19, 1896, Wallis was the only child of Teackle Wallis Warfield and Alice Montague. Tragedy struck early when her father died of tuberculosis just five months after her birth, leaving Alice a widowed mother at age 18. Wallis and her mother were forced to rely on the kindness of wealthier relatives, who ensured the young girl still received an elite education at the prestigious Oldfields School, where she was known for her wit, style, and charm.[^1]

At age 20, Wallis made a respectable marriage to U.S. Navy aviator Earl Winfield Spencer Jr., but the union quickly soured due to Spencer‘s drinking and philandering. Wallis reportedly begged her husband to "lay off the booze" in letters, but to no avail.[^2] During a stint living in China while Spencer was stationed there, Wallis allegedly underwent a botched abortion that left her infertile, though historians debate the veracity of this claim.[^3] The unhappy couple divorced in December 1927.

Scaling the Social Ladder

Just six months later, Wallis exchanged vows with Ernest Aldrich Simpson, an Anglo-American shipping executive, in London. The two became fixtures on the city‘s society scene, throwing frequent dinner parties at their flat where Wallis‘s "vivacious personality" reportedly charmed guests.[^4] It was through mutual friends that Wallis first crossed paths with Edward, Prince of Wales in 1931. By 1934, they had embarked on a full-blown affair.

Year	Event
1931	Wallis Simpson meets Prince Edward at a party
1934	Wallis and Edward‘s affair begins
1935	Wallis attends a royal dinner party as Edward‘s guest, shocking his family
1936	Edward ascends the throne as king; his relationship with Wallis becomes public

[Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII Notable Dates]

As their romance blossomed, the besotted prince lavished Wallis with gifts and affection. "I am sure that you are the only woman in the world for me," Edward wrote to her in 1935.^5 That same year, he insisted on Wallis accompanying him to a royal dinner party, deeply offending his mother Queen Mary. But Edward, by all accounts an immature and stubborn man, was not to be dissuaded from the relationship, even as Wallis remained the wife of another man.

The Love That Shook an Empire

When Edward ascended the throne as king following the death of his father George V in January 1936, his ongoing relationship with Wallis Simpson became a matter of urgent government concern. As head of the Church of England, which at the time did not permit remarriage after divorce, Edward was expected to give up his married American mistress or choose between her and the crown. He chose Wallis.

The resulting abdication crisis rocked the nation. As biographer Anne Sebba has written, Wallis became "one of the most talked about, written about, admired, vilified, photographed women in the world" virtually overnight.^6 The British press and public largely condemned her as a social-climbing temptress out to corrupt their king for money and status. "Hard-hearted, tough, scheming and wildly ambitious," is how one courtier described her.[^7]

Wallis‘s nationality, class background, and marital history all fueled the vitriol against her. Lady Redesdale, mother to the famous Mitford sisters, sniffed that Wallis and her friends were "common American muck."^8 Even the Royal Navy battleship HMS Fury sent a telegram to the Admiralty declaring, "Uneasy about Simpson. Fears entertained nightly visits continuing. Apparently becoming serious."[^9] A poll at the time found that 97% of Britons disapproved of Wallis as a potential queen.[^10]

Group	Reaction to Wallis Simpson
British government	Opposed marriage, pressured Edward to choose between Wallis and the throne
Royal family	Appalled by relationship, refused to grant Wallis royal titles after marriage
British public	Largely disapproved, saw Wallis as a social climber and home-wrecker
British press	Ran critical coverage painting Wallis as a gold-digger out to ensare the king

[Reactions to Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII‘s Relationship]

Wallis, for her part, did make a last-ditch effort to walk away and spare Edward his crown. "I am willing to withdraw from a situation which is untenable," she said in a public statement.[^11] But Edward would not be moved. In a radio broadcast on December 11, 1936, he declared, "I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love."[^12] And with that unprecedented act, the reign of King Edward VIII was over.

Exile and Infamy

Wallis and Edward, now the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, married quietly in France on June 3, 1937, and settled into a life of luxurious but aimless exile. Wallis in particular seemed to struggle with the loss of purpose, writing to a friend, "I hope the day will come when I can be useful to my country and it in turn will acknowledge me as one of its citizens who has not failed it in its hour of trouble."[^13]

As World War II loomed, the Windsors‘ 1937 visit to Nazi Germany to meet with Adolf Hitler only amplified suspicions that the couple harbored fascist sympathies. FBI files would later reveal that Wallis was rumored to be passing secrets to high-ranking Nazi Joachim von Ribbentrop, though these allegations have never been definitively proven.[^14]

Indeed, much about Wallis Simpson remains open to interpretation and debate. Did a middle-class American woman really set out to steal a king? Was she a convenient scapegoat for a weak-willed prince‘s dereliction of duty? A pawn in a larger game of intrigue and espionage? Or one half of an epic love story, a woman who fought tooth and nail to marry the man she adored?

Perhaps the most enduring myth about Wallis is that she was intersex and incapable of consummating her marriages. Though this rumor has been thoroughly debunked, with the royal gynecologist later confirming Wallis was "a normal woman in every way", it persists as an attempt to explain the obsessive, irrational love Edward bore her.[^15]

By the time the Duke died in 1972, the Windsors had been married for 35 years, a union that lasted in spite of the turmoil it caused. Wallis would live another 14 years as a widow before passing away at age 89 in 1986. In the end, as she herself put it, "You have no idea how hard it is to live out a great romance."[^16]

A Complicated Legacy

In the decades since the 1936 abdication crisis, public perceptions of Wallis Simpson have gradually softened somewhat, with many historians painting a more sympathetic portrait of a woman who fell in love with the wrong man at the wrong time. Books and films like 2011‘s W.E. have sought to rehabilitate her image and highlight the challenges she faced as a disenfranchised outsider vilified by a classist, xenophobic establishment.

"[Wallis] may have appeared hard, tough, and uncompromising, but that was largely a façade she used to mask a basic insecurity, a woman who was deeply in need of love," biographer Greg King has argued.[^17] Others, like Lady Colin Campbell, have posited that far from a simple love match, Wallis and Edward‘s relationship was a "sexual quadrangle" involving hidden homosexual liaisons on both sides.[^18]

What‘s clear is that Wallis Simpson was a complex, polarizing woman onto whom society projected many of its fears and fascinations. She was hardly the first American divorcee to marry into European royalty, yet Wallis uniquely bore the brunt of British disdain and snobbery, with even her physical appearance relentlessly mocked and caricatured.

Some have drawn parallels between the treatment of Wallis and that of another American royal bride, Meghan Markle. Both women faced vicious media criticism and racist abuse, yet as historian Francesca Cartier notes, "Eighty years later, the monarchy was strong enough to survive an American divorcee marrying into the royal family. The abdication was not necessary [for Harry and Meghan]."[^19]

Ultimately, the story of Wallis Simpson endures as one of the great "what ifs" of the modern monarchy. What if Edward VIII had been allowed to remain king with a morganatic marriage? What if he had given up Wallis to keep his throne and gone on to reign during World War II? Would the monarchy look different today?

The woman unfairly blamed for nearly destroying a thousand-year-old institution has also, in a sense, become one of its accidental saviors. For in abdicating and leaving England, Edward VIII spared the nation a king crippled by indecision and Nazi sympathies at the very hour of its greatest need. Instead, it fell to George VI and his indomitable wife Elizabeth to lead their people through the darkest days of war.

Wallis, for all the controversy she generated, was in many ways merely a catalyst for a larger reckoning over the future of Britain and its monarchy. As she herself reflected late in life, "I‘m not a beautiful woman. I‘m nothing to look at, so the only thing I can do is dress better than anyone else. If everyone looks at me when I enter a room, my husband can feel proud of me."[^20]

In the end, Wallis Simpson‘s great legacy may be in forcing us to look more closely at the fairy tales we tell ourselves about love, ambition, and power – and the very real human hearts that lie beneath the crowns.

References

[^1]: Sebba, A. (2012). That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor. St. Martin‘s Press.
[^2]: Morton, A. (2015). 17 Carnations: The Windsors, The Nazis and The Cover-Up. Michael O‘Mara.
[^3]: King, G. (2011). The Duchess of Windsor: The Uncommon Life of Wallis Simpson. Kensington Publishing Corp.
[^4]: Sebba, A. (2012). [^7]: Williams, S. (2004). The People‘s King: The True Story of the Abdication. Palgrave Macmillan.[^9]: Ziegler, P. (1991). King Edward VIII: The official biography. Collins.
[^10]: Broad, L. (1961). The Abdication Twenty-Five Years After. History Today, 11(12).
[^11]: Williams, S. (2004).
[^12]: Windsor, E. (1951). A King‘s Story: The Memoirs of HRH the Duke of Windsor. Cassell and Co.
[^13]: Sebba, A. (2012).
[^14]: Bloch, M. (1996). The Duchess of Windsor. St. Martin‘s Press.
[^15]: King, G. (2011).
[^16]: Bloch, M. (1996).
[^17]: King, G. (2011).
[^18]: Campbell, C. (2012). The Queen Mother: The Untold Story of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, Who Became Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. St. Martin‘s Press.
[^19]: Hallemann, C. (2020). Why the Royal Family Didn‘t Want Wallis Simpson to Marry Edward VIII. Town & Country.
[^20]: Taraborrelli, J. R. (2003). The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty. Grand Central Publishing.