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


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Branchg...is there anything that supports the theory Edward was sterile?

Is this something that came out later. I only ask because if this was something that George V or anyone else knew, perhaps it wouldn't have made a difference if Edward had married Wallis. He could have married anyone, didn't have a child, and then George and Elizabeth would have inheirited the throne anyway.

Can you imagine how different British history could have been?!
 
I know of that theory that he was sterile but I also know that there are people who claim to be his children and one of them I have known of personally - my father was the solicitor in a town near where Edward stayed on his visit to Australia in 1920 and where nine months later a girl was born who received cards and other stuff from the royal family and Edward while my father was the family's solicitor. She herself never claimed to be Edward's child officially but the general belief around the town where I grew up was that she was his child. Her parents married shortly before she was born and her 'father' took care of her but it is noted that she went to a different school to those of her younger sisters and she was raised Anglican whereas they were raised Presbyterian.
 
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The Dukedom was created by George VI in March 1937...
Thank you very much branchg :)
Extended members of the royal family yes, but disgraced ones IMO.
Well the 2nd Duke would be the grandson of George V, 3rd Duke would be the great-grandson.
Would be a shame if any potential heirs were treated with the same level of disdain shown to edward
 
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Well to be honest, any potential heirs, IMO would stay quite clear of Britain and the RF because to not do so would cause trouble.
They would have to live with the fact that they will until at least The Queen passes, have to deal with that problem.
 
Would be a shame if any potential heirs were treated with the same level of disdain shown to edward
One can't help but remember the 'lovely' pictures of the Windsors making nice to Hitler. The course of history might have been very different had E been king. I doubt the royal family would ever have acknowledged any illegitimate heirs. I can't recall any being acknowledged in the last century... and I'm sure they're out there somewhere.:whistling:
 
First of all just because Edward was apparently "nice" to Hitler, doesn't mean his children would have been.
Also, any children Edward and Wallis might have had would have been legitimate, what makes you think otherwise?
None have been acknowleged because there aren't any, someone in the monarchy would know about them because they aren't going to ignore any children born to Edward and Wallis are they.
 
One can't help but remember the 'lovely' pictures of the Windsors making nice to Hitler. The course of history might have been very different had E been king. I doubt the royal family would ever have acknowledged any illegitimate heirs. I can't recall any being acknowledged in the last century... and I'm sure they're out there somewhere.:whistling:

To be fair here Edward was one of many people who made 'nice' to Hitler in in the 1930s, including members of the aristocracy and the American wealthy elite. The difference really is that most of them denounced Hitler sometime in late 38, 39 or early 40 whereas Edward and a few others don't seem to have done so until later. Remember that Lord Halifax, for instance, was for a negotiated peace with Hitler in 40 and he almost became Britain's PM - how different for the world had that happened. When Chamberlain stood down as PM there werew only two candidates - Churchill and Halifax who had the support of the Conservative Party, the palace and even teh Labour Party believed they could work with him. Fortunately he didn't fully press his credentials and Chamberlain was able to recommend Churchill as his successor.
Lord Halifax tried to negotiate peace with the Nazis - Telegraph
E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The point behind including this information is to show that Edward wasn't alone in supporting much of Hitler's ideas in the 30s.
 
:previous: It's true that Edward wasn't the only person to support Hitler at this time. But weren't some in the government supportive of appeasement, but not necessarily Hitler himself?

Certainly not everyone in the government was immediately wary of Hitler -- Churchill made it his "thing" toward the end of his "wilderness years" to make public the dangers of German rearmament. He faced a lot of opposition for doing this.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor visited Hitler in 1937. Yet Halifax visited Hitler in 1936 and seemed quite impressed with him. So Edward wasn't the only person to be doing this sort of visit.

It seems quite ambiguous to me -- how far Edward VIII would have supported Hitler and how different his views were to other people in government at the time. Perhaps he became a scapegoat for those who supported Hitler but then moved on as it became obvious war was imminent. Or maybe he did have views that were sympathetic to the Nazis. It's hard to tell.

As an aside, it seems that every time I read something about Edward VIII lately I discover something downright nasty. According to his Wiki article (not the best source, I know), when he was informed that the PM of Australia had voiced opposition to his marriage to Wallis Simpson he said that there were "not many people in Australia" and that their opinion didn't matter. Australia's population at the time was small, but still. You silly little man.

The reference for that quote is Sarah Bradford's book on George VI, by the way. Has anybody read it? I'm beginning to think I should, as a lot of resources about this time period refer to it.
 
The horrors of the Great First War did lead many to look for appeasement. I think I have that book by Sarah Bradford, and yes I did hear the Australia statement by Edward VIII.

He definitely did Britian and the world a favor by abdicating IMO. We should really be thanking Wallis!
 
The horrors of the Great First War did lead many to look for appeasement.
Yes, and is it any wonder? People wanted to find meaning in the staggering death toll. Another war just over twenty years later didn't seem acceptable.

A few Edward & Wallis books were mentioned up-thread, here. I just read some of The people's king on Google Books to feel out if it's worth reading or not. I immediately disliked the beginning: Edward striding manfully through an abandoned steelworks as a saviour of the working class.

The author treated the thousands of letters of support that Edward received as evidence of something, too, rather breathlessly I thought. Of course a large proportion of the population supported Edward. He was the King!

It seems very hard to find an even-handed account of this whole affair. Edward was either the people's prince (see above) or a cocktail-swigging wastrel. His brother was either a dull waste of space or a man who struggled through his extreme shyness. Wallis was either a misunderstood American who bucked convention, or a merciless gold-digger. It goes on.

The image of Edward as the people's king is too one-sided for me. He may have toured industrial areas, but so did his brother, who had the misfortune of being far less sure of himself. I think away from the crowds Edward showed real contempt for his subjects, and that's a far better measure of his ability to be king. If Edward really wanted to be King, he could have agreed not to marry Wallis. I'd like to know how taking the "easy way out" fits into that argument.

Edward VIII was certainly a complex man and like his brother his personality was shaped by his troubled relationship with his father. He was not a saint. Just how good a king he would have made obviously depends on how you interpret things. I think Wallis did the world a favour.
 
I've read it, or at least most of it. I'd say that it's very good. Bradford is thorough and unbiased. Another excellent book is A SPIRIT UNDAUNTED by Robert Rhodes James. I'd highly recommend James's book about George VI for anyone who's interested in the King's work with his government and his political (in the non-party sense of the world) role during WWII.


The reference for that quote is Sarah Bradford's book on George VI, by the way. Has anybody read it? I'm beginning to think I should, as a lot of resources about this time period refer to it.
 
I've read it, or at least most of it. I'd say that it's very good. Bradford is thorough and unbiased. Another excellent book is A SPIRIT UNDAUNTED by Robert Rhodes James. I'd highly recommend James's book about George VI for anyone who's interested in the King's work with his government and his political (in the non-party sense of the world) role during WWII.


As an historian and teacher of History I must jump in here and say that there is no such thing as 'unbiased'. Sometimes the bias isn't obvious but it is there in one way or another. Good historians try to be even handed but they are biased. The very fact that they have chosen to research one topic over another shows a bias in favour of that topic to begin with. Bradford is a good historian but is a monarchist and thus the bias actually is in favour of monarchy, even if not blatantly obvious it is there anyway.
 
Well, yes, I suppose that I meant that there's not an obvious bias on Bradford's part. Everyone, even historians and scientists, bring their own preconceived notions to a subject. I would say that Bradford is not in thrall to her subject. She's objective in so far as she isn't a biased and can see her subject's flaws as well as his/her good attributes. I also like her as a serious biographer because she almost always mentions her sources.

As an historian and teacher of History I must jump in here and say that there is no such thing as 'unbiased'.
 
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I don't care, a good bio. is a good bio. Biased or not, it's up to the reader to discern for themselves.
 
I don't care, a good bio. is a good bio. Biased or not, it's up to the reader to discern for themselves.


I must disagree.

Bias is there and a reader who doesn't make note of that won't be able to evaluate the biograhpy properly as they won't be able to pick out the areas where the author's personal ideas have influenced what they are writing or even why they have put something in or left something out.
 
My point being: the bias is ALWAYS going to color the biography, I hope the reader is well enough informed to decipher it for themselves.
 
Yes, I agree. The more a person reads by various good authors (meaning authors who list sources and attempt to be honest and impartial), the more a person is apt to get the complete picture of someone.

My point being: the bias is ALWAYS going to color the biography, I hope the reader is well enough informed to decipher it for themselves.
 
Also, if you are like me you are apt to read a lot of books on a particular author. I realize that everyone is not like me. Thus, I have read several books on the Windsors....you can certainly tell who is pro David/Wallis and vice versa.
 
Also, if you are like me you are apt to read a lot of books on a particular author. I realize that everyone is not like me. Thus, I have read several books on the Windsors....you can certainly tell who is pro David/Wallis and vice versa.
This is true, however, it's fascinating, isn't it? I loved reading Aline, Countess romanoes account of her time with Wallis, very flattering, then there are the ones that are Pro Queen Mum and I think, yes, that was a difficult time and Wallis and David were really very selfish, weren't they? So it's rather nice to have a smorgasboard of bio.s from which to chose, IMO.:D
 
The more a person reads by various good authors (meaning authors who list sources and attempt to be honest and impartial), the more a person is apt to get the complete picture of someone.

I agree, but I also think that it's impossible for an author to be completely unbiased. When a book is level-headed and well-researched, that's okay. But what's I can't stand is when an author makes an ad hominem attack against a historical figure who can't fight back -- being "bitchy" is how I would best describe it.

For instance, I was flicking through A. N. Wilson's After The Victorians (have a look here) the other day, and I noticed how many people the author dismisses with one broad, over-critical brushstroke.

This is what he says about George VI:
He was an edgy, bad-tempered and in many ways weak man, though passionately dutiful, a kind husband and father, and a devout Christian.
A nice little put-down there.

He has a bit more to say on Edward VIII, and since he's the subject of this thread...
Being Prince of Wales isn't a job, but David did his duty as heir to the throne with enough ablomb to make him a matinee idol on the world stage... He liked smoking. He wore outrageous clothes, jazzy socks, turn-ups on Oxford bags, bright tweeds, all the garments that would have made Jeeves wince had Bertie Wooster insisted on wearing them.

Being King gave Edward less time than he would have wanted for his amusing friends, and much has been made of his bored expression during the grotesque summer ceremony when 600 debutantes were "presented" at court, or his failure, during a summer holiday in Scotland, to turn up and open a hospital. But the truth is, he did far more than Queen Victoria had ever dreamed of doing in the way of public duties, and he performed some of them with imagination and aplomb. His occasional lapses are not to be compared with the temper-tantrums and awkward shyness of his brother Bertie throughout his public life both as Duke of York and George VI... Edward would have made a perfectly satisfactory king had be been allowed to stay in place, but history, extraordinarily babyish in this respect, has to depict him as a selfish sybarite, a Nazi sympathiser, a man who would have "brought down" the monarchy, and his brother -- a decent enough person in his way for someone all but talentless -- as a sort of saint.
Ouch.

The book is enjoyable enough in itself, but A. N. Wilson seems to delight in taking tiny details of his subject's lives and distorting them beyond significance. In my mind the above quote outlines a point of view that is put across quite unsubtly and one that distorts the truth. To the best of my knowledge George VI never chucked a tantrum in public, yet in order to elevate Edward VIII the author has to denigrate his brother.

Similarly, he dismisses Edward VIII's other rather impetuous acts and paints his Nazi sympathies as some sort of act of jealousy.

In my mind this isn't the sort of historical writing that lets the reader decide things for themselves. It would be very easy to present the above paragraph in a way that doesn't so obviously editorialise.

I highly recommend A. N. Wilson's book for its scope, but after reading it I come away with the feeling that the author is a sort of historical film critic -- evaluating historical figures and always feeling slightly disappointed with them.
 
I think it is possible to have an unbiased biography. Although I think that by the time an author has finished their project, they have formed an opinion.

Its why I hate watching MSNBC and Fox News, just give me the facts and let me form MY opinion.

I think the truth is probably a little in between. Edward was a decent Prince of Wales and an awful King. He let his personal needs and desires get in the way on what was best for the country, though again it looks like Wallis did England a favor.

I also understand that for a time a lot of people (upper class included) supported the Nazi's. Though its worth noting that some of them came around when the full extent of the Nazi horrors became well known. I don't believe this was the case with Edward though. Which was another failing of his IMO, he could never recognize when he was wrong.
 
What annoys me about sources like that are the weasel words. Stop obfuscating and let me make up my own mind!

Similarly, I wouldn't go so far as to call George VI a saint. He was just a quiet guy who stepped up and did his duty. It's admirable that he didn't crack under the strain and conversely deplorable that his brother ducked out of his responsibility. The story of the abdication is more complex than simply casting Edward as either the dreadfully wronged party or the sinner.

Both were complex, sometimes difficult people, and both were affected deeply by their childhood IMO.
 
Its why I hate watching MSNBC and Fox News, just give me the facts and let me form MY opinion.
I have friends who only watch the BBC as they say they are unbiased completely.
 
Thanks Russo...one of my friends turned me onto BBC as well.
 
All news media is biased -- just some more so than others.

The BBC is technically politically independent. That doesn't mean they haven't been biased, but IMHO they're consistently higher quality than a lot of the dreck out there.
 
Well, they appear to be unbiased when reporting American events which is (sorry to say) what matters to me. I am sure those who follow British events can say something else.

But back on topic....I just picked up the book Letters to Wallis and Edward (1931-1937). A great find...3 bucks! It was edited by Micheal Bloch.
 
I think is so weird that there isn't more biographies on these two. Even though post-abdication, they were basically just jet-setters (but even as jet-setters they were always on the trends where jewelry and clothing were concerned...which isn't important but probably made a lot of designers careers so for they could be written about), the abdication itself was quite historical for its time period. And an important event in royal history.

I hope when that Madonna film comes out that it will invigorate interest in this couple.
 
That's a good book; I read it 20 years ago or so. It's quite revealing about both Wallis and Edward. Does it include Wallis's letters to her Aunt Bessie? I remember reading some of them as well, but I can't remember whether they're in the same volume.


But back on topic....I just picked up the book Letters to Wallis and Edward (1931-1937). A great find...3 bucks! It was edited by Micheal Bloch.
 
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