Duke and Duchess of Windsor (1894-1972) and (1895-1986)


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Yes, Osipi, I think you are quite right. David had all the stubbornness of a weak and vain man. He was not a leader and it's always been my belief he never wanted to be King and was looking for an 'out' as early as the First World War.
I don't know if he wanted out that early. he was reasonalbly good in WWI, tried to get to the Front, and in the 1920s he worked fairly hard at the royal tours.. but he grew bored I think, got fed up with his father and the expectations of "duty duty" all the time. I guess also he knew they would like him to marry a nice well bred girl and produce heirs and he wanted to stay with his devoted Freda.. and his other flings.
But the catalyst was Wallis. If he hadn't met her, I think he would have stayed as King...
 
I've never heard that he threatened to kill himself. But clealry he would not have let WaLLIS go without a drama and a fight and as she had presumably had some feeligns for him and was linked with him.. and in a way had no one to go back to, by then, she was stuck with him.

I did a bit of sleuthing and found a very interesting reputable source (The Telegraph) to confirm that David did indeed threaten suicide should Wallis ever leave him. Not only does this mention that threat but this is an excerpt from a book called "That Woman: A Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor" by Anne Sebba. It was also made into a documentary that was shown on British channel 4 (I'm presuming as I don't know British channels) called "Wallis Simpson: the Secret Letters".

Its a very interesting read I think and gives a good insight into Wallis while she was going through her divorce from Ernest Simpson.

Wallis Simpson's secret letters to her ex-husband - Telegraph
 
One thing I've learned from working a suicide hot line is that if someone says they're going to commit suicide, there is a good chance that its exactly what that person is planning to do or would do.

From reading the article I posted, it was mentioned that even Wallis found his behavior very immature and to be honest, she probably knew him well enough to know he wasn't blowing smoke and seriously meant that threat. Its similar to a child holding his breath until he gets what he wants.

As I've said before, David had a fatal attraction to Wallis. Sometimes I'm inclined to think that his "love" for Wallis wasn't a genuine give and take partnership but his "love" depended on her because of how it made him feel. Like a child with a security blanket, he needed Wallis to function and she became his top priority over everything else in his life.

The man had serious issues methinks. Now I have a question. What was David's relationship with his mother like? Would that perhaps maybe have had an impact on what he was looking for from Wallis?
 
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Q Mary was very strict with him and the other children. Loving but not "lavishly affectionate" and of course very prim and proper and conscious of the RF's "position". So she expected a lot of him, and he perhaps found something similar in Wallis, that she was not that affectionate (because she didn't really love him) so he was in the same positon as he had been with his mother, of trying ot live up to her expectations and looking for emotional sustenance from someone who wasn't really an affectionate person. I think that QMary DID love him, even if she didn't show it openly but I don't think Wallis DID care that much. But she was reputed ot have told him off about drinking or smoking, for his health's sake, and even when she was his mistress, "playfully reprimanded him", in front of people.. I suppose that appealed to him.. that she was palying the strict mother that he was used to. I think he was half wanting someone to "look after him" and tell him off affectionately, for his own good and half feeling that his "mother figure" didn't really love him that much, because that was the way he perceived his own mother being...
and In Wallis' case I think she was not that much in love with him, but she told him off "for his own good" and perhaps guessed on some level that that was what he wanted form a woman... But I think at times the telling off and ordering him around were expressions of irritation with him.. because she found him rather tiresome.. and dull. I think she was bored at times with his spoiled ways, with his doting on her all the time and wanting her whole attention ad she had at least one fliration with another man because she problaby found him more entertaining...
As for his suicide threats I'm sceptical. I think it was just a bluff to make her say she'd stay with him. Rather like George IV with Maria Fitzherbert...
 
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One thing I've learned from working a suicide hot line is that if someone says they're going to commit suicide, there is a good chance that its exactly what that person is planning to do or would do.

From reading the article I posted, it was mentioned that even Wallis found his behavior very immature and to be honest, she probably knew him well enough to know he wasn't blowing smoke and seriously meant that threat. Its similar to a child holding his breath until he gets what he wants.

As I've said before, David had a fatal attraction to Wallis. Sometimes I'm inclined to think that his "love" for Wallis wasn't a genuine give and take partnership but his "love" depended on her because of how it made him feel. Like a child with a security blanket, he needed Wallis to function and she became his top priority over everything else in his life.

The man had serious issues methinks. Now I have a question. What was David's relationship with his mother like? Would that perhaps maybe have had an impact on what he was looking for from Wallis?

I agree with your summation. :flowers:

Watching that PBS show on Wallis changed whatever mind I had about Wallis. I realized what an unenviable position she was in. With Ernest leaving her ('arranging' to leave her in consultation with David without her knowledge, imagine her hurt and despair when she learned that!), her only option (really) was David (given her age and the notoriety and 'the times' for a woman). She had already been in that 'in between' world of not married after having been married, she didn't want to go back to that, understandably (ekking out a living, how? another time for women, not easy). I think she was in a bind with a seriously obsessive lover (actually threatening her with stalking across the world), a lost husband (and lost secure social and financial situation), and world-wide infamy. She did what she had to do. She made the best of it. A lot there. More tragic than we know, perhaps. :ermm:
 
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I agree that once everything played out Wallis was stuck with David. I don't think that's how she wanted things to play out but once it did I think she made the best of it and I don't think that the marriage to David or her life as the Duchess of Windsor was unfulfilling for her.

I think that when someone threatens suicide that it should be taken seriously but there are instances where it is an attention seeking move or an act of manipulation, but like with other things, I don't know what Wallis could have done in 1936.

Regarding Edward VIII/David, suffice it to say, he had mommy issues. Regarding relationship with his mother, it seems mixed - he famously said that she had ice in her veins, in fact I think he said it more than once, but I'm always struck by the fact that there was a giant painting of Queen Mary in the Windsors' Paris apartment. I think that she cut him off in the immediate aftermath of the abdication but at some point they re-connected and wrote letters to each other and had private visits. Despite his complete besottedness with Walls, Queen Mary refused "to receive" Wallis and David was willing to leave Wallis behind when he visited his mother and other family members.

I also recall David stating that, as a child, when his father wasn't around that his mother was a lot of fun to be with but thing changed when "he" returned, which IMO is a strange environment in which to grow up.
 
I recall Queen Mary was very warm and loving with the children alone and when with the King, she had to relent to his wishes because as she is to have stated, "he is the King." Not to stray way off topic, but there is an anecdote that one evening Prince Henry was late to dinner and King George merely looked at him and Henry fainted. That's the environment David was around although I still think it was the best thing he abdicated as he was totally unsuitable to be Monarch.
I'm sure Wallis was fed up with his immaturity, but had to know he was reduced to a mere "jet setter" with no real purpose in life after the War, even the war stint in the Bahamas for the Windsors was really to keep them from England and out of Axis hands. I'm sure she knew she couldn't ever divorce David, with the exception of only the most dire circumstance. If she divorced him at any time she would have been viewed with scorn. The woman who's husband gave up the Throne of the British Empire because of the woman he loved, cruelly leaves him. That was a bind for Wallis. I think they did have many happy times especially after the War.
 
I agree that once everything played out Wallis was stuck with David. I don't think that's how she wanted things to play out but once it did I think she made the best of it and I don't think that the marriage to David or her life as the Duchess of Windsor was unfulfilling for her.

I he visited his mother and other family members.

I also recall David stating that, as a child, when his father wasn't around that his mother was a lot of fun to be with but thing changed when "he" returned, which IMO is a strange environment in which to grow up.
I agree. I woud't feel too sorry for Wallis. She wanted to be a royal mistress and perhaps she hoped that if she was David's mistress HE would be kIng, and would NOT marry and he would keep her by him all her life.. with her husband discreetly in the background. But David wanted to get married and perhaps she didn't - being American - realise how impossible that would be. and by then, Dav was so besotted that he wasn't willing to take no for an answer.
I think she found her life as Duchess boring in some ways but she was very rich, she was socially prominent, in café society, she had an adoring if boring husband.. and really it was OK..
If she'd remained with Ernest it would have been the same only she wouldn't have been so rich and England wouldn't have been a "forbidden country" to her. (and maybe Ern would at some stage have ditched her if he found a new mistress he wanted to marry). But I think Wallis was tough and selfish and would have coped if she had been married to ES and he divorced her for some reason. I'm suere she would have found a new man.
as for the suicide threats I really would not believe in them. I think that he was just trying to make her feel sorry for him.

In the old footage below (from the 1990s I believe), the Queen refers to her boxes and claims to be "a quick reader".

https://youtu.be/ZDd7I8V38e8?t=28
Of couse she reads them. She is very conscneitous about her work
 
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I recall Queen Mary was very warm and loving with the children alone and when with the King, she had to relent to his wishes because as she is to have stated, "he is the King."
There is a quote of Queen Mary's out there that says something to the effect that "I must always remember that their father is also their King." Given Queen Mary's near religious reverence for royalty (possibly a product of her own morganatic ancestry) she wouldn't have wanted to cross her husband in ANYTHING - or even offer quiet advice - on his parenting style.
 
I think she was not a bad mother but not as affectionate as some. And yes she had that "stiff demeanaor" and feeling that as royals they all had to behave in a certain way and that the children should reverence George as their king. I think that David felt short changed and turned to other older women, for "mothering", but perhaps he felt with Wallis that she was giving him the sort of "mothering" that he was used to from QM, ie strict, fussy, maybe NOT all that loving
 
I am familiar with Queen Mary's quote but it does not hold water when it comes to the early childhoods of her children, Victoria was the sovereign when four of Queen Mary's six children were born and Edward VII was sovereign when the youngest two were born. Edward/David was sixteen when his father became King. I don't dispute that she made the comment but I wonder what the context was.

I am an admirer of George and Mary as monarch and consort but their parenting of David and Bertie during their early childhoods was quite awful IMO. Oddly enough I don't have problems with how they handled the Prince John situation, and going back to that quote, supposedly Mary did stand up to George over John having non-royal playmates, George was opposed, and my guess is that George actually would have been "her Sovereign" when Mary stood up to George over the playmate issue.
 
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:previous: While their parenting style may very well have been awful, we have to be careful to see things in their own time. By the standards of their time they were no more or less loving than most royalty, nobility, aristocracy, etc. They raised their children differently and to intimate that David's problems involved "mummy issues" as a cop out.

As to the notion of Ernest and David conspiring to achieve a divorce, both Wallis and Ernest were close friends but throughout their marriage both had lovers. Was it any surprise that Ernest fell in love with one and wanted to marry her since his marriage was a total sham?
 
As to the notion of Ernest and David conspiring to achieve a divorce, both Wallis and Ernest were close friends but throughout their marriage both had lovers. Was it any surprise that Ernest fell in love with one and wanted to marry her since his marriage was a total sham?

In the PBS show I saw ('Extraordinary Women' - Wallis Simpson episode) it was stated that while Wallis was in France at one juncture, when the scandal was breaking, Ernest and David met discussing what each man wanted. This was unbeknownst to Wallis, and when she returned to England and discovered that the two men had met and come to an 'agreement' of some kind, she was deeply hurt, blindsided, events were moving fast and suddenly out of her control (as much as she had control previously). With the news her life as she knew it came crashing down. I think she very much did not want him to abdicate for her, and I am starting to think that she may have been fond of David, but she was not in love with him. What a nightmare for her, really.

I am not a Wallis Simpson afficianado, but over the years I've come across her, of course, and been exposed to 'the usual narrative'. (There are so many films about the couple). I'm sure there are many here who know and understand far more of her and the situation than I but that recent PBS show really seemed to have a good bead on her predicament. I'm inclined to accept that spin. :flowers:
 
Of couse she wasn't In love with David,fond of him at best. She like the kudos of being his ladyfriend, but she didn't believe that he would marry her, and possibly didn't believe the affair would last that long.. so if she found him irritating at times, she could cope..
I think she certainly did not want him to abdicate for her.. his attraction was that he was Royal, and if he left the post of King, how Royal or rich would he be?
She preferred being his mistress with Ernest in the background and knowing that she could return to her old life, with a nice bit of jewellery, if the affair ended. but he wanted ot get married. And I think she accepted tat, becuase he was still very rich and to an extent was still treated as royal... Even so she found him boring and cloying at times
 
:previous: While their parenting style may very well have been awful, we have to be careful to see things in their own time. By the standards of their time they were no more or less loving than most royalty, nobility, aristocracy, etc. They raised their children differently and to intimate that David's problems involved "mummy issues" as a cop out.
I did not elaborate on what I meant by George and Mary's parenting of David and Bertie during their early childhoods being quite awful but JSYK my opinion has nothing to do with me failing to take into account the parenting norms of royals and aristocrats in the late nineteenth century. For the record I have no problems with George being a strict father and Mary not being an effusively warm mother, my opinion is more shaped by the children being cared for by an abusive nanny and her abuse going undetected, there is more than one fainting story, there is also a story of Edward/David fainting when he was summoned to his father's study, and I also find the characterization that his mother was a completely different person when his father was not around rather bothersome.

I stand by my comment that Edward/David had mommy issues, or perhaps nanny issues, but I did not state nor did I mean that it was the be all and end all of his issues and flaws.
 
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I find the fainting storeis a bit hard to believe in.. i'd like to see what the provenance for them is.
I think that G and mary weren't awful or great parents. I think they boht loved the children, but that Mary was awkward with small children and George was strict and a bit of a bully. The nanny story while it is bad, is probably not THTAT unusual at the time, that because upper class children were very much in the Nanny's charge, unless she was very abusive, it might not be discovered easily.
But I think that David, as the eldest son had the burden of great expectations and as such perhaps felt the bullying by George and the "coolness" by Mary harder to take. Children differ a lot, Just as P Charlres was more bothered by HIS parents' coolness than Anne was.
But I think that there were alsos flaws in David's character, that made him choose to get out of royal life, that may have been exacerbated by his parent's neglect but which were HIS faults not theirs.
 
Well then did England indeed dodge a bullet when David abdicated?

Threatening suicide? More a call for help or attention than an actual threat to his own life?

Different era, I see a lot of similarities between David and William, both reluctant heirs, only difference being the latter has a fairly determined - and the difference being; available under law - lady on his arm, she saw him through college as commoner girlfriend, in a much more stronger position now as wife and mother.

People can speculate as much as they like about the relationship between David and Wallis - fact is they stayed together and appeared very happy together for the rest of their time together.
 
Well then did England indeed dodge a bullet when David abdicated?

People can speculate as much as they like about the relationship between David and Wallis - fact is they stayed together and appeared very happy together for the rest of their time together.
As others have pointed out they didn't have much choice but to stay together. If either of tem had walked out of the marriage they would look like it had all been for nothing, that they had been self indulgent enough to cause the Abdication crisis and hadn't even made their marriage work. And Wallis was especially tied because David was always besotted iwht her. But she had at least one "emotional affair" wit the gay Jimmy Donauhue that annoyed the Duke seriously.
Yes I think the UK did dodge a bullet because David would have probably been reluctant to fight Nazi Germany and might have been willing to be a puppet King for the Nazis
 
I was thinking more in terms of what the RF are, rather than English politics; they are merely the puppets that represent the UK (thriving) business that is the RF - no one seriously believes in the existence of Devine Families these days! Or at least one would hope so!

Suspect David knew that too and opted out, but with a wingwoman who was there right to the end.

Whatever the begrudgers say, they can't take that away! :)
 
I agree with your summation. :flowers: ...
Watching that PBS show on Wallis changed whatever mind I had about Wallis. I realized what an unenviable position she was in. With Ernest leaving her ('arranging' to leave her in consultation with David without her knowledge, imagine her hurt and despair when she learned that!), her only option (really) was David (given her age and the notoriety and 'the times' for a woman)...

I quite agree, though as her choices in men were serially bad and self-centered, I have problems empathizing with Wallis. I know, it was a different age, but she is a great example of choosing men and then realizing "be careful what you wish for..."
 
Denville;196534e4 said:
[....]
Yes I think the UK did dodge a bullet because David would have probably been reluctant to fight Nazi Germany and might have been willing to be a puppet King for the Nazis

The British Sovereign has zero comma zero say in the business of the UK Government and the decisions of the Supreme Command. In 1914-1918 the Sovereign had no any say in the fact that his country went into war and saw his cousins the German Emperor, the Russian Tsar and the Austrian Emperor with "their" forces on the same battlefield.

A King Edward VIII had not prevented his country declaring war on Germany, when the British and French guarantees to Poland were challenged. Like everyone in those days also Edward would go into the maelstrom of shocking events and become catapulted as the focus point of the Nation. Possibly it would equally have been his finest hours as King, as it was for his brother.

That the King would have had ány influence on war-making is most unlikely. Exactly like Her Majesty is confronted with a fait accompli when Teresa May thought it was a good idea to rush to Trump and invite him for a State Visit. The Queen will receive him. No matter her personal thoughts, the massive opposition. She has to do it. Teresa wants it. And she will do it.

No difference with Edward VIII. Churchill wants this and the King indeed will do what Churchill wants. Note that this King was an excellent and popular Prince of Wales. The strange antics all started when he was exiled from Court and country. Away from any wise counsel and steering.
 
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I was thinking more in terms of what the RF are, rather than English politics; they are merely the puppets that represent the UK (thriving) business that is the RF - no one seriously believes in the existence of Devine Families these days! Or at least one would hope so!

Suspect David knew that too and opted out, but with a wingwoman who was there right to the end.

Whatever the begrudgers say, they can't take that away! :)

well yes of course he knew the RF are not "Divine". he just didn't want the duties of being royal ,only the perks. And Wallis stayed with him because she had little choice. Where would she go, after being married ot an Ex King? She would also be vilified by those who admired the "great love story".
 
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I think Wallis was fond of Edward and enjoyed the lifestyle he could give her. In love? I think not. However, once they were married she was stuck and couldn't ever leave.
 
A damning, if long, summation of the persona and character of Edward by Tommy Lascelles, who served him for over twenty years as (Assistant) Private Secretary and his view of the role Mrs Simpson played in the run-up to the Abdication Crisis, following the death of King George V.

This is an interesting portrait of the Duke of Windsor by a man who knew him very well.

Prince Charmless: A damning portrait of Edward VIII | Daily Mail Online
 
These two articles were extremely interesting....Thanks for having brought them to our notice !
 
I think Wallis was fond of Edward and enjoyed the lifestyle he could give her. In love? I think not. However, once they were married she was stuck and couldn't ever leave.

true. Perhaps I was a bit harsh on her.. maybe she loved Donahue, because it was a rather bizarre romance so what else coud explain it but some kind of love? I think htat she was fond of Edward, and of Ernest Simpson.. but she was foolish in engaging in such an intense romance with her royal lover as I think that it annoyed Ernest and he took up with Mary Rafferty?? was it? his mistress whom he later married.
I think she liked Edward enjoyed the affair and let it take over her life because it was fun and she was admired as a royal girlfriend and was pampered and amused.. and then she realised that Edward was madly in love with her and woud not give her up. she had tried to juggle both men and ended up with ES giving up on their marriage and Edward insisting on marrying her.
but I think while she liked Edward and enjoyed his company, she found him rather boring and too cloying, and got restless.. but she coud not really leave him, even when she was fed up and was attracted to Jimmy Donahue.
All the same I feel she was a hard and selfish woman who was chiefly out for her onwn amusement in relationships or what she could get out of them
 
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